The Crown: The Official Podcast

Prince Philip: You, make a better person of me 

Queen Elizabeth: And you of me. Isn't that the point of marriage?

Edith Bowman: Welcome to 'The Crown: The Official Podcast'. 

I'm Edith Bowman, and this is the show which follows the fifth season of the Netflix series, 'The Crown', episode by episode. We lift the lid and take you behind the scenes, speaking to many of the creatives involved, diving deep into the stories. 

Today, we're talking about episode two, titled 'The System'.

In this episode, we discover Prince Philip's passion for carriage driving, and we see the connection that develops between himself and a family friend, Penny.

Prince Philip tries to make Diana understand that she must stay silent and learn to accept the royal system, just as he has. But does this work? Or is this book about to change the Royal Family forever?

We'll cover specific events and scenes that feature in this episode, so if you haven't watched episode two yet, I'd say you do it now, or at least very soon.

Also, just a quick warning that this episode contains discussion of suicide and eating disorders, so listener discretion is advised.

Jonathan Pryce: I knew what to do with my hands, also you see me teaching someone else how to do carriage driving. And you have to know how to hold the reins properly, even if there’s no horse there, it’s all that, that detail is important.

Edith Bowman: Yeah. 

But first in this episode, we begin to see the differences between Diana's life as an outsider versus Prince Phillip's. 

Whilst Philip takes an interest in carriage driving and gains friendship away from Elizabeth, Diana hopes to find understanding and freedom by agreeing to work on a tell all biography of her life.

I wanted to learn more about these two parallel lives, so I sat down with the director of this episode, Jessica Hobbs. And I started off by asking her about her perspective on this episode, when she first took it on.

Jessica Hobbs: Well, there's two parallel stories running, but they do coincide. One is Philip's drifting from Elizabeth, I think it's, it's after their many decades together, he's questioning what life he can have outside the regime that they have to follow by the necessity of who she is and what she does. And I think it's him carving a life for himself.

I think that the death of the youngest Knatchbull daughter, and the connection with Penny that starts to develop from that opens up that door. And at the same time, Diana, who is feeling extremely alone, is offered an opportunity by someone who sees her from the outside, which is in Morton. So, I see those as quite parallel stories. 

Edith Bowman: Different griefs, isn't it really? 

Jessica Hobbs: Different griefs. That's such a good way. I wish I'd thought of that. That's a really good way of putting it.

It is different griefs. She can feel the end of the marriage coming, and she wants to be heard. And I think for him, I don't think he wants to end the marriage at all, but he wants something for himself. Otherwise, I think he would've felt very isolated, you know, in his own way. And so, he creates this kind of, I mean, he'd done it through his carriage driving and through the friendships that he had, but this is a very specific one that develops over that time.

Edith Bowman: There's lovely symbolism as well. I think in various episodes whether it's the Royal Yacht Britannia, you know, symbolizes more than it just being a, a boat. And we have this lovely bird. 

Jessica Hobbs: The Goshawk. Yeah. 

Edith Bowman: Yeah. Tell me a little bit about that and the, the purpose of that throughout this episode and what it's sort of saying and symbolizing.

Jessica Hobbs: Well, what it started initially was Peter going, "I really want there to be a bird. Jess you'll think of something to do with it". And I'm like, "okay." He's done that to me before. But actually I knew what he meant. I really knew what he meant and we talked a lot about it. And then we talked a lot about the type of bird it would be.

We wanted something that was relatively rare, but also had a sense of magnificence to it and a sense of observation to it, for both of us, I think. Philip understands that he's being clocked, that he's just being tracked by something perhaps a bit bigger than him, and what we, I think both Peter and I loved about it is, it's not that he's doesn't have faith, he really does, but he doesn't have faith at the level the Queen does. 

And so, her faith is so impregnable, unbreakable, but I think he's got a great questioning in his, and he, and he's come from Greek Orthodox into the Christianity and the, and we know that the he's asked those bigger questions. So, I felt that the bird was in some way, tying us back to the astronauts in the sense of he's always reaching further out there. So he's, he's clocking it. He can see it. It's, it's much more about what he's noticing rather than the bird noticing him.

Edith Bowman: We've got this great Diana and Philip scene in this episode, where he goes to visit her in her Kensington apartment. I'm really fascinated by the relationship between these two. It feels kind of father-like.

Jessica Hobbs: Yeah. She called him Pa in the letters that they wrote to each other. And, I think it's very, it's complex and it's so wonderful to watch the kind of, I think he really believes he's doing the right thing. He's saying to her, ‘you understand how it works?’ You, you know, but he's slightly threatening near the end of it.

Edith Bowman: Yeah.

Jessica Hobbs: Because he needs her to understand.

Edith Bowman: Tonal shifts in that. Isn't it? 

Jessica Hobbs: Yeah. 

Prince Philip: You're not a novice anymore. You're long passed the point of thinking of us as a family, that's the mistake people make in the beginning. But you understand, I think, it's a system. And we're all in this system…

You, me, the boss, the cousins, the uncles, the aunts, the lepers. For better or for worse, we’re all stuck in it. And we can’t just air our grievances and throw bombs in the air as in a normal family, or we end up damaging something much bigger and something much more important. The system.

Jessica Hobbs: That was Jonathan's first scene.

Edith Bowman: Was it?

Jessica Hobbs: I know isn't, it's amazing. I think it's amazing. 

Edith Bowman: The first for the whole thing?

Jessica Hobbs: Yeah. 

Edith Bowman: Wow. 

Jessica Hobbs: Very first scene, day three of shooting. He said, "I'll be fine. I'll be fine." I said, "I know. You'll be fine. You'll be fine." "So should I walk here?" I'm like, "it's all good. It's all good. It's all good." And, and the, the power that he brings to it is really fantastic and just lovely things that we are working out between the two of them, ‘cause she was saying, "shall I sit down?"

I said, I, I said, "you sit down. He's not gonna sit down." And I said, "but if you sit down, expecting him to sit down, that's gonna do something really interesting to you" and you see her face as she's going down that he's and he says, no, and you know, it's in the writing, it's implicit there, but it's also how to keep that alive for the actors.

What are the choices that you make choreographically that show those kind of power balances happening? You know what it's like, you walk into a meeting with someone, and they say, "have a seat" and you sit down and you realize they're standing and you're like, this is gonna go really badly. 

Edith Bowman: Yeah.

Jessica Hobbs: But you just know,

Edith Bowman: Give me the bad news.

Jessica Hobbs: Exactly. But, I liked, it was both his appeal to her as someone he felt - he felt she was emotionally intelligent and could understand what he was talking about. And he, and he was saying to her, you know, there isn't, it's not, we're not keeping you in a cage. You can have a lot of freedom. 

Edith Bowman: It's almost like kinda "look at me" in a way it's kind of look. 

Jessica Hobbs: Yeah. It's completely. 

Edith Bowman: It’s sort of, I did it. 

Jessica Hobbs: Yeah.

Edith Bowman: So, you can.

Jessica Hobbs: I figured it out. I can tell you, but follow my path. Don't go out to there. Don't go out to the public, follow what I've done. And, and to him, that's a kind of, I dunno. It's like when you're dealing with a teenager that you are perhaps really frustrated with, sometimes I dunno if you know about this Edith ever?

Edith Bowman: How long have you got?

Jessica Hobbs: Exactly. But there are certain times when you go, do I say anything? Do I not say anything? 

Edith Bowman: Yeah.

Jessica Hobbs: And sometimes you just go, "I've kind of gotta tell you this, because I've been through this in life and I've just gotta tell you what's up ahead. You can choose to ignore it, but it's not good, what's coming" and, and I, and for me, that's his intent in the scene is: danger. 

Edith Bowman: Yeah. 

Jessica Hobbs: This is, it's not just about me telling you what not to do, but when he is talking about the system, he's really explaining the system. 

Edith Bowman: But it's interesting ‘cause we're kind of, you know, we're taking those steps towards certain things and obviously 'Panorama' is in the, in the, in the future, but Morton's book was a big, big moment, you know, and the, the steps that she's moving towards working with him on this book.

Jessica Hobbs: Yeah, and with James Colthurst because that was the other thing is, we wanted to give her a proper friend, someone from the outside world, who'd known her since she was younger. And what was that like? So we could see a different side of her and she's very relaxed with him, and she's very funny, and she's very cheeky, and she feels safe. And there's not many people that she feels safe with. 

Edith Bowman: Particularly because she's worried about people listening in on her conversations and that's starting to kind of - that's in her psyche. 

Jessica Hobbs: She knows she's starting to get that. Yeah, it is in her psyche, and she's anxious about what that is. And I think I, we don't know, but you could feel that there was a narrative building about her that was making her anxious. And those things start to take hold, and then they become a kind of a truth in the bigger community.

Edith Bowman: Yeah . 

Jessica Hobbs: And it's very hard to push back and I think she just could see, and he could see as a friend, I think this could be an opportunity for you. And I, and look, Morton was brilliant. He was a consultant. He was fantastic.

Edith Bowman: Was he?

Jessica Hobbs: Yeah. He was amazing. And he, you know, he also gave us access to, you know, all the stuff you can see all her handwritten notes on the book, the stuff that she said to him. You know, there's, there's a lot of stuff that's that that is available. I mean, I know we've seen it in documentaries and things, but he's very fair and very clear about the process of what that was and her, her level of engagement and her care with what to say and what not to say.

And it's hard, I'm sure, because it felt very explosive, but then Panorama's around the corner and we all know that. 

Edith Bowman: Yeah. 

Jessica Hobbs: So the book is just a beginning. 

Prince Philip: So, the tip I want to give you is this, just be creative. You can break as many rules as you like, you can do whatever you want, you can make whatever arrangements you need to find our your own happiness as long as you remember the ones condition, the one rule. You remain loyal to your husband, and loyal to this family in public.

Princess Diana: You mean silent? 

Prince Philip: Yes. Don't rock the boat. 

Edith Bowman: We really see in this episode, the beginnings of her paranoia that she's being watched and listened in on, whenever she's on the phone, she's sure she can hear someone else on the line. And of course, the difference of her public life, where she is now, one of the most loved women in the world, to her private life, the loneliness, the vulnerability when she's at home. And this almost sense of despair, which I guess is why she decides to work with Morton on the book. How did you work with Elizabeth Debicki for this episode in particular?

Jessica Hobbs: I mean, we started by having long, long Zooms. She was in Australia and I was in London. And I think, look, in some ways it helped, we're both Antipodean, so we cut through a lot of stuff. And Elizabeth actually went to drama school with my brother. 

Edith Bowman: Oh, wow. 

Jessica Hobbs: So, I've known her, they're really close friends. So, there was, there was an immediate trust in a way, which was, and I'm very grateful to her for that because she came in with a very open kind of heart.

It's very challenging playing someone that everyone believes they know so well, but also imbuing it with something of yourself. And that was what I kept trying to bring it back to, what does it mean for you? You, you, Elizabeth, what can you relate to out of this that can kind of land it? Cause when it becomes external, she can still do it brilliantly, but it's less moving for us as an audience.

And so, a lot of what was understanding the challenges of being in, in that kind of environment, how you would have to act on a daily basis, what that would mean that you might have to suppress of yourself and how that might bubble out.

I mean, the other thing she did, which was brilliant is at one stage, ‘cause she, you know, we did the reads where, and everyone was like, "Oh, the voice is extraordinary".

And she was, she said to me afterwards, "yeah, look, I've got the voice. I can do the voice. But what I need to be able to do is know that the voice is there as I, if I'm kind of throwing stuff around the couch or I'm giggling with the kids in front of the TV, I don't wanna just be doing the Panorama version of her.”

Edith Bowman: Yeah.

Jessica Hobbs: I need to just free it up. So, she did a lot of work with Polly Bennett, who I love, who did the movements with her, and that physicality really kind of freed her up and she was very funny with that. Once she said to me, "I just need to go and spend" and she did it. She said, "I need to spend four hours in a big room where I can do it, where I'm screaming or I'm laughing, or I'm, you know, sitting, eating a meal with friends" and blah, blah, blah. I just need that kind of stretch of breadth.

Edith Bowman: Wow. 

Jessica Hobbs: And that was - that level of commitment, I thought was kind of extraordinary. And it meant that when she got on set, cuz of course for Elizabeth, our entire first week was all her and her apartment. That was a big....

Edith Bowman: Yeah.

Jessica Hobbs: It's like here's the plank off you go. 

Edith Bowman: Yeah. 

Jessica Hobbs: And, and on her own and I thought she was brilliant. 

Edith Bowman: Yeah.

Jessica Hobbs: A lot of that stuff in episode two, where she's reading the stuff that she'd written to Morton and those tapes, we were just doing that slightly on the fly. She and I liked doing little set, set ups and grabbing little bits and pieces, some of which Peter had written and some of which we'd just grabbed from research and things. And I just loved the way that she did that. 

Edith Bowman: Yeah. 

Jessica Hobbs: And again, the, you know, she's laughing at some of the stuff she's thinking about herself. How she hated her nannies and things. So, it just pulls it out of that. What we know is such a small band, you know, and it's not that we even do know for certain, but we're just trying to give as much depth and complexity to this person that we all love, and all feel we know.

Princess Diana: Tall, with glasses?

James Coldhurst: Yes.

Princess Diana: I know the one. Clark Kent. 

James Coldhurst: He said his name was Andrew. 

Princess Diana: Yeah. That's just what I call him silly. Andrew Morton, he's one of the friendly ones. He's written some nice things about me in the past….

Edith Bowman: Now, as Jess mentioned, working with movement coach Polly Bennett is so important for the cast on 'The Crown'. 

Many of the actors I've spoken to since doing this podcast have mentioned how invaluable her work is to help them embody the character that they're playing.      

I was so excited to finally meet her and get her on the podcast, and I asked her, well, what day to day life as a movement coach entails. 

Polly Bennett: So, as a movement coach, I work with the actors who come through 'The Crown' and give them space to physicalize all of the ideas that they have from research and through their audition process, and also what's demanded from the script. So, obviously people are playing real people, so there's the kind of pressure and the ideas that people have about how those people act and how they move. And my job is to try and practicalize that for the actors, so it doesn't just get stuck in their head. And they start thinking about tilting their head one way or, you know, using their hands in a certain way, rather than actually connecting to their body and the emotional psychosomatic thought that leads to the, the movement. 

Edith Bowman: It's part of the storytelling.

Polly Bennett: Huge amount, a huge part of it. And I think, you know, let's not forget that people come through audition processes, or they get the job and then suddenly, they can't just go on set. There's a huge amount of work that has to happen.

So, I come in and work with people, you know, if they want it, it's always offered and then usually spend a couple of hours with them and I'm able to kind of help landscape the scenes, according to the things that I've seen in my research. You know, there's a kind of acknowledgement in some book I've read somewhere that every person, you know, you, me, the Queen, exists as 14 to 16 different rhythms a day. So, you are never the same in any situation.

Elizabeth as Diana and Dominic as Charles, we have to find the different rhythms that those characters work at, and that's where the imaginative work comes in. And so, there's those moments where we, we look at and go, okay, well, she moves her left hand here and she does this dah dah, dah, dah, dah. Whereas we have to take what we see in those moments and go, "how would that be in a different environment?" 

So, the big thing I find myself talking to anyone, playing members of the Royal Family is about just applying your brain to the idea that you are being watched and seen constantly. So, if I had somebody watching me all day, I would absolutely do limited, limited things to not be judged.

Edith Bowman: Yeah.

Polly Bennett: You know, so to not, to not give anyone, any material to think differently than what I believe is the kindest version of myself. So, that's kind of, you know, that was a real kick-off for Imelda playing the Queen, you know, just putting her in a space where I was just going, "Hey, the walls have eyes, there's eyes everywhere. So you have to limit what you do". You have to, if you think of cameras going off, you don't want to be caught, pulling a face or pulling a position that can be...

Edith Bowman: Yeah.

Polly Bennett: Viewed as something else. So, then you, you give those sort of images and then take them away for when people are in private spaces.

And so again, the stakes of being in your private space are much lower, more, more low than myself.

Edith Bowman: Yeah.

Polly Bennett: Because I've not been, I don't have the opposite, which is being seen all the time. So, yeah, so it's, that was particularly fun with Diana  because we'd have her lounging upside down on sofas and sitting on the edge of things that she wasn't meant to.

Edith Bowman: Slouching 

Polly Bennett: Slouching. Absolutely because she unconsciously or subconsciously enjoying the idea of not being seen. 

Edith Bowman: Wow.

Polly Bennett: Mainly the work with Imelda was to elevate that feeling, so that the idea that everything that she does can give information away, that she doesn't want to. You know, and this things with how the Queen holds her handbag and when she might move it to a different hand, and it's sort of hearsay - I don't know if this is true - that she would move her handbag to another hand when she wants her aides to come and save her from a conversation or it's a signal for her to go. And also the idea of what's in her handbag of like, what is important for her, to have on her that makes her feel safe.

Because even though she's lived in, she's got this lived experience of the most famous woman in the world, she might not like it all the time, you know? 

Edith Bowman: Yeah. 

Polly Bennett: She's a human at the edge of it that needs to grip onto something to give her something else to think about.

Edith Bowman: Yeah.

Polly Bennett: So, it was more, you know, we, we worked on our own little system of that for herself.

Edith Bowman: Yeah. 

Polly Bennett: As well as how she stands and, and you know, the idea that she's always ready to go, rather than sitting back into her heels and having that moment of "uh" breath before she leaves. She's always ready to go. So, for Imelda, she pressed her big toes into the floor, so she's engaged. It means her back straightens up, which means her back is en-, engaged so she can move off quicker.

If your weight's in the back of your feet, if you want to, you know, if you try at home, you stand with your weight in, weight in the back of your feet, you've got a little hesitation before you're able to step off. So, for Imelda it was about just putting herself in that position, putting the, her body weight in the middle of her feet.

Edith Bowman: Do we know what's in the handbag? 

Polly Bennett: Well, I mean, we know well, we've decided, you know, we decided, and you know, that changed for Olivia as it changed for Imelda and I think that's theirs to share. 

Edith Bowman: Amazing. Okay. 

Polly Bennett: Yeah. 

Edith Bowman: I gotta dig on that one for sure. 

I have to ask you about Charles just quickly. I want to ask about Charles's walk and the hands, you know, the kind of, I mean, I found myself doing it the other day and I was like, what does it say, why am I doing that? Walking with your hands behind your back and holding your wrist? That's what, that's what it is, isn't it?

Polly Bennett: Yeah.

Edith Bowman: And he's always done it or has he?

Polly Bennett: Well, Prince Philip does it.

Edith Bowman: Oh.

Polly Bennett: So you, look, you look at footage of Prince Philip walking and he regularly has his hands behind his back and he's holding his wrist as you're saying. But the, the, the thing for me that was, is interesting about that is that the tops of his hands aren't touching the suit. So, it's actually just the, kind of, nubbin of the, of the wrist that's touching his back. So, I turn that, you know, this is where my imagine, imagination kicks in, I'm like, well, it's to not crease the suit.

Because if you put your hands on your suit, you're gonna crease the suit or you're gonna start playing with the material and it's fidgety and it gives off too much information. So, for the generations, for, for Josh and for Dominic and for Tobias and for Jonathan, that's the kind of note that I gave in that it might not be that that's how it exists in their brain anymore because they've done their own work, but that was kind of the reason behind it.

Of course, there are, I can say to an actor, ‘Okay. Just put your hands behind your back like this, and that's kind of what he does.’ And I think Josh O'Connor spoke a lot about our discovery of when Charles gets out of a car and checks his, does his sort of keys, money, phone kind of routine, but for him, because he is not carrying his keys and his money, and his phone because, you know. 

Edith Bowman: Yeah.

Polly Bennett: They're not allowed, you know, touching his pockets, touching his handkerchief in his top pocket. 

Edith Bowman: Yeah. 

Polly Bennett: And then, cufflink and then he does a little wave, you know, that sort of routine is ingrained in his being because he's been around his dad and he wants to, or we can imagine he wants to be like his dad.

And so, yeah. So for Charles, it is hands behind the back or it's hands in the pockets. And when he's in ... my voice changes just cause I'm doing the action!

Edith Bowman: You just became Charles there. 

Polly Bennett: I know, I know it's a weird thing because I, I always say this is that I'm not an actor, but if I think practically about what he's doing, so in the Dimbleby interviews, Prince Charles is sitting in a very low, low seat, whereas Princess Diana in her Martin Bashir interview is sitting in a high seat with a armrest. And so already I'd look at those two things side by side and see what behaviours come.

Edith Bowman: What does the touching of the fingers imply? Do you think?

Polly Bennett: Well...

Edith Bowman: ...or what does it do for…

Polly Bennett: It's when he thinks he thinks, and we, we also, you know, I'm making, I'm pressing my fingers together. I'm making sort of chapel, we called it chapel hands, because it's a way of going, please help me as if he's put, pressing his hands together, but he can't do that because he can't go, "ah, please help me. I'm so uncomfortable". So, instead he's pressing his anxieties through his fingers. And that's what I read from when you watch him in that interview is that he's pressing the information through his fingers to try. And so even if you were to do this now and just press your fingers together, it makes you something happens in your head.

Edith Bowman: Yeah. 

Polly Bennett: So we took…

Edith Bowman: You kind of become a bit stronger. 

Polly Bennett: Exactly. So, we are giving that to an actor is like, okay, I'm looking for strength here. And then that helps infer how they're speaking, and the dialogue that they've got to work with. So, you see it's sort of inferring what that means and passing on to an actor so that a hand movement doesn't just become a mimic. It becomes a reason.

Edith Bowman: Right, it's time now to head over to ‘The Crown's’ research department for our new feature for this season of the podcast.

Let's ask Head of Research, Annie Sulzberger, the questions we've all been wondering about. 

Annie, what came out in the Andrew Morton book and how was it written?

Annie Sulzberger: Okay, I'm gonna start with, how was it written?

Edith Bowman: Okay. 

Annie Sulzberger:  So, Andrew Morton was a Royal correspondent for various newspapers. He also wrote books. He wrote a very kind of easy-going book on Diana in the late eighties, and he was part of the circuit, she knew who he was a little bit, but he becomes friends with one of her good friends, Dr. James Coldhurst in the late eighties. 

And there, we don't know if he did it because he was courting him or whatnot, but they met each other on one of her tours of a hospital that James Coldhurst worked at. And then they started playing squash together and hanging out and it's in 1991 when he says, ‘Hey, I'm thinking of writing a book about Diana, do you think I could sort of have her cooperation?’

And it's that the same time, it's the second honeymoon that we show, and she's very angry with the state of their marriage and with the way in which his, Charles, private secretaries are pinning news of the marriage. So using the second honeymoon to say, look, aren't they so in love? No, they're not. It was not good. So, when they say, when Morton says ‘I'm gonna possibly write a book about her’, she's like, ‘okay, maybe I could help here. Maybe this is the time.’

So what he does so that he's not lying when he says I never interviewed her, and when he defends the book, he asks James Coldhurst, James Coldhurst to, to take his questions to Diana at Kensington Palace. And they're very good friends and no one's gonna be suspicious that James is coming by, and she will record her answers on tape. He will then take the tapes back home, Morton will come over to his house, James will give Morton the tapes to listen to them then and there, and he will transcribe. 

And so it's essentially an autobiography, because she is providing him with all of this personal information that's never been public at all. And she's also giving him access to her best friends and her closest confidants. So, it's the closest thing that we have to an autobiography by Princess Diana before her death. So, it comes out. I mean, he is stunned by her candour as is the rest of the world when it starts to be serialised in 1992 in the Sunday Times. But they decide to publish it in Finland for security purposes - the book - because so many people on Fleet Street have now woken up to the fact that this is gonna happen and that she might be behind it. 

So they publish it in Finland, and it’s serialised in the Sunday Times, and in it she tells all, you know, that she knew about the Camilla relationship from the start, that she was bulimic. A lot of people didn't even know what bulimia was at the time, that moment where Andrew Morton actually, you know, Coldhurst says Andrew Morton didn't, had to look it up, he did. He had no idea what bulimia nervosa was. She claims she threw herself down the stairs, she tried to kill herself five times, The Royal Family never was there for her, Charles never loved her.

I mean, it's interesting because there's one point when Morton says ‘I can't publish this, unless you give me evidence for something’ and that's the Camilla affair. So she, she steals private correspondence from Charles' briefcase in Balmoral and shows them essentially, or copies of them, and says 'is this enough?' to Morton and the publisher and their lawyers and they say, it’s proof of a relationship, but it doesn’t really prove it’s sexual. So they review them and say ‘we think we can allude to a special friendship.’

Diana’s pretty furious with the compromise, but she accepts it because we all know what that means. So they're willing to go on record with that. 

And mind you, nobody knows she's involved because she's, they're not claiming it's an autobiography. So it's at the start, it's completely discounted as just pure fantasy, written by someone who hates the sort of Charles court, and all of his friends come out and supporters and say, and, and newspapers that support Charles and say, this is utter rubbish. But then she goes to visit her friend, Carolyn, who is a primary source in the book and is credited as such, in a show of good faith. Like, yes, it is true because if it weren't true, I wouldn't be visiting her. I would've struck her off as a friend, so she's essentially adding a legitimacy to it. 

So, from that moment on Elizabeth and Philip, who had always been rather just like, ‘make it work, make it work, make it work’, we can't divorce in this family, the Church of England, you're gonna be, you know, the Head of the Church when you ascend to the throne, you can't be divorced, you just have to make it work.’ They say, ‘okay, if we can't divorce yet, then fine. We're finally behind separation because we get it. This is not manageable anymore. You can't just return to the status quo with her.

There needs to be some indication to the public that, yes, this couple is no longer romantically involved, but they're gonna take their public duty seriously. And they're going to stay married for the public.’

But what's really useful with Morton to keep in mind is this is one person's version. For example, she never admits her own affairs and she's had four by this point.

So she places a lot of blame on Charles about him being adulterous, but she completely omits all of her indiscretions I mean to the point where I, I don't think Morton knew about them, she just hid them all. So, you have to keep that in mind, this is a confessional from one perspective, and, you know, Charles would counter that with other authors, his Dimbleby for example, and each one of these, this is not the truth, this is their truth and it's obviously rather flawed.

Edith Bowman: And finally, it is time to hear from the brand-new Prince Philip for this last iteration played by the iconic Jonathan Pryce. 

I was thrilled to chat to him on set at Elstree Studios in Diana's astonishing apartment. Now, Jonathan is no stranger to interpreting real life people. So, I asked him what it was like when he took up this role in particular.

Jonathan Pryce: Pretty much the same as when I got a phone call to say, they want you to play the Pope. I thought I'd be on a hiding to nothing. And then I met, you know, the people involved with the Pope and I thought, yes, this is something I wanna get involved with, and it was pretty much the same with Prince Philip.

There was something that I didn't know about, that deep down, I thought I'd like to be asked just so I could say no. But I, I'd, I'm not a, a monarchist at all, ad when ‘The Crown’ was first on, I thought this is something I don't wanna watch. You know, I thought it'd be...another version of Downton or something that I thought I wouldn't be that interested in.

Edith Bowman: Yeah. 

Jonathan Pryce: But like Downton, I got hooked after watching the first episode. I'm sure Peter Morgan wouldn't like the comparison with Downton, but there you go. We watched the first episode and just out of curiosity thinking I, I wouldn't carry on watching it and it was so good, you just kept watching it.

You know, I'd grown up with the Royal Family I'd watched when I was six, I'd watched the coronation on, the, one of the first televisions in our street where my mother had put the blackout curtains up from the war not long before. And I remember lying on my stomach with a little toy cannon that fired matchsticks, and I was firing them at that television and I had my gold coronation coach with the white horses, somebody gave it to me. And obviously my coronation mug.

Edith Bowman: Have you still got them? 

Jonathan Pryce: They're somewhere. I know they're somewhere in a box. 

So anyway, all this is, you know, no, I didn't think I'd wanna be involved with it initially, but it was meeting, I then met Peter Morgan. And it was him talking about how the arc of the, the character would go in the next two, well, certainly in the next series, five. I don't know much about what's gonna be involved in six yet.

Edith Bowman: Did he give you a script to read though at that, when he was...

Jonathan Pryce: No. No, there was no, there was nothing 

Edith Bowman: Just purely conversation? That's amazing. 

Jonathan Pryce: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I, I, I trusted him because of the, everything else that had been the rest of the series. I knew that it it's, you know, it's so incredibly well made and produced and it, you know, I, I don't regret saying yes at all. 

Edith Bowman: When you, when you said yes, where did you start in terms of your preparation for Philip? 

Jonathan Pryce: Well, I, I played quite a few real life people in the past and I, if they're not, contemporary, and if there's no video of them, I rely on the, the writer. I'm not a great reader. I don't read for pleasure, and I tell myself, well, Peter Morgan’s done all this work and what I am presenting is the script. 

You know, even if it's a piece of fiction, it's I'm, I will be honest and truthful to the script. And it was also a way of telling myself that I'm, I'm just playing another character.

Jonathan Pryce: I'm not, I'm not being Prince Philip. I'm being a version of Prince Philip and I'm being my version of Prince Philip, who, in my head, has to be a, a fictional character 'cause it's, you know, it's not a documentary. It's a drama.

Edith Bowman: Yeah. 

Jonathan Pryce: And I am, and as is Peter, making incredible assumptions about this man about what his inner life is. Of course that's been the value of ‘The Crown’ anyway is, that they present an image, usually sympathetic to what the, that person may or may not be thinking, feeling because the, the facts are a given. We know they get on a line and shake hands with a lot of people, then we know they dance at Balmoral and all thanks to Philip letting the cameras in, but I always rely on the script, but what I don't have of Philip is any video of him sitting at home, pissed off in any way about his life, but I have the public image of him. 

And so that's when there's the invention, what makes this man behave in a, a certain way? And he's much more, I wasn't that aware of him to be honest, all we knew about him was what  the, well, the most we knew about him was what was on the TV news every time he visited a foreign country and made a, a, a gaff.

Jonathan Pryce: And then the more you see you look at him, and you see him meeting people. And it was the, one of the things that made me worry about playing him was you see that he's a man among men and I've never been a, I mean, you know, I don't see myself as this, uh, very…it goes like to be a sporting character or whatever hail fellow well met. And he's a, he's a man. You know that everyone was in the job, man, you know?

Edith Bowman: Yeah. Military and... 

Jonathan Pryce: And I thought, oh God, I, I can't do that. I can, I can do the, the weak man who becomes strong or whatever. So that was interesting to pursue that line with Philip, to find out a little bit more about what made him tick, shall we say. 

And you find, the audience will find it quite late on in this series. And that's, it's an in going back to, I think, think your question was this journey, he was on… That's an interesting arc to go with him to begin to understand him more. 

Edith Bowman: Yeah

Jonathan Pryce: And why he was, he was, who he became. 

Edith Bowman: Did you know at the time who your Queen was gonna be? 

Jonathan Pryce: I did. Yeah. Yeah. And that's great. So, I've known Imelda for over 35 years. 

Edith Bowman: Wow. 

Jonathan Pryce: We worked together. I think it was the last time we worked together - first and last time - was in ‘Uncle Vanya’ in the West End in eighty... ‘89 I think it was. 

Clip – Philip and Elizabeth disagree about marriage. 

Elizabeth: …it’s not just because any husband or wife can feel when something is awry, but ultimately it’s not what I know about you, or even what you know about me. It’s what He knows about all of us. 

Philip: I think He has the night off occasionally.

Jonathan Pryce: I mean, she. been great to work with. I mean, her acting's okay. But, it's the bits in between because she makes me laugh. She's very witty, very funny. And the nice thing is that when we've laughed together, it's never been about the work it's about something else. 

So, there's never been a case of, you know, sending it up or making jokes about Philip or Elizabeth and - But no, she's, I think she's wonderful. And it's been interesting to watch her into the Queen from, you know, almost day one until when we were last filming in Moscow, supposedly, and she was giving this speech and she was every inch of the Queen. She was wonderful. She's great.

Edith Bowman: It's really interesting, but the, the different relationships that he has in this season and how that relationship with Elizabeth, you know, where we find them at 47 years of marriage and what that relationship has become at that point and how he has a duty, they have a partnership and how it's important. We find him particularly in episode two, where he's at this point where, he needs to find his own voice in a way he needs to find his own thing that's his. And that's through his racing and we see you in your carriage racing, and I'm assuming that's you and not a Jonathan Pryce double?

Jonathan Pryce: I do all my own stunts.

Edith Bowman: I love it. Of course, you do. I wanna talk a little bit about that if you don't mind. 

Jonathan Pryce: Yeah. 

Edith Bowman: About the, the carriage racing and what that - 

Jonathan Pryce: I, I went and trained. You can only go so far because it's hugely complicated and difficult with guiding, steering four horses at once. But the people I've trained with the people who they do, all the horse stunts, they, they do ‘Game of Thrones’, they've done other things that I've been involved in and they’re called the Devil's Horsemen. And one of their preoccupations over pasttimes is carriage driving and they drive, and were part of Prince Philip’s gang.

Edith Bowman: Oh wow. 

Jonathan Pryce: And so, they, they didn't, they talked a little about him, but what they did say about him was hugely informative because they just said what a great guy he is. And he's a lot of fun and they, they loved him.

Jonathan Pryce: And yeah, I did,  I did some actual driving with horses, until you get to the film set and of course, they won't let you near a horse because the insurance and all kinds of things. And so, I was towed by towed, by a truck. But because of the training I'd done, I knew, I knew what to do with my hand, also, you see me teaching someone else how to do carriage driving and, you have to know how to hold the reigns properly, even if there's no horse there. And it's all that, that detail is important. 

Edith Bowman: Yeah. 

Jonathan Pryce: And even when you're faking it, you gotta fake it, you know, as real as possible. And there's one sequence where I have got my reins on the horses and we're going around, and through water, not jumps, the opposite, water shoots, whatever. And, I was having a great time, but the real driver was hidden behind me with the real reins and I had a fake, but it was.

Edith Bowman: Could you see what he liked about it? 

Jonathan Pryce: Oh yeah, yeah. Oh, it's very, it's...The horses are very powerful and they have minds of their own and it's very dangerous. And, you know, even he fell off and overturned and all kinds of things. No, it's very exciting. It was like being on a, a funfair ride. It was great.

Edith Bowman: When you were considering taking the part and you were thinking about what it was gonna be like to work on ‘The Crown’ what was that versus the actual reality of being part of the show? 

Jonathan Pryce: Well, I, it didn't take me long to say yes, it really didn't and I, I, no, I, I felt positive about it all the time. If there were things, I was nervous about is to do with me, not with ‘The Crown’ and it's whether I could, whether I could do it. And I would go home after the first, well, nearly all the way through - I've never been so uncertain about something I'm doing ever. And I would go home and be not, not too depressed, but concerned I, I wasn't getting it right and in some way that that's quite a good thing at the, in retrospect, that I wasn't overly confident because I'm portraying a man who yet, on the outside is overly confident, but on the inside is going, ‘I dunno if I'm doing this right. I might, maybe I should be doing something else, maybe.’ So, you're always questioning yourself as yourself and your questioning as a character. 

Edith Bowman: Yeah. 

Jonathan Pryce: Yes. So you, I'm gonna be interested to see it 'cause I've not seen, I don't look at myself, uh, while we're filming. I don't go and look at the monitor at all. And when I finish in make-up and I can barely look at myself in the mirror. 

Edith Bowman: Really? 

Jonathan Pryce: Yeah. But, but, and what I, what's interesting what I see, I don't see me at all, not at all. And for me, that's, it's something new because my Kate, my wife, if she ever has any criticism of me, which is very little, she used to say, but why do I, you always tend to make the character yourself, bring the character to me. And I wasn't aware I did that, but thinking back it's, you know, I find, I try and find something of me in every character I do. 

Edith Bowman: Yeah. 

Jonathan Pryce: But Philip it's something that's completely outside my can and it it's been very interesting. So, I'm, I'll be interested to see it. 

Edith Bowman: I'm Edith Bowman, and I’d like to give a special thanks to our guests on this episode, Jessica Hobbs, Polly Bennett, Annie Sulzberger and Jonathan Pryce. 

‘The Crown: The Official Podcast’ is produced by Netflix and Somethin' Else in association with Left Bank Pictures. 

Join me next time when I go behind the scenes of episode three of season five of ‘The Crown’ titled ‘Mou Mou’.

Egyptian businessman Mohamed Fayed is desperate to become part of the British establishment, but will he ever be accepted by the Royal Family?

Sydney Johnson: If I may say so, whatever thoughts you might be thinking, I imagine they're no different from the thoughts the Duke had about the Royal Family almost every day he was alive. 

Mohammed Al Fayed: What are you talking about? Mohamed al Fayed just made the Queen of England very happy indeed!