The Crown: The Official Podcast

WS: Sorry not to see your girlfriend.

P: She's picking me up after this. We're spending the evening together before I return to Dartmouth, but don’t tell anyone. It’s a secret. She's not official. Yet.

WS: Is she the one?

P: Yes, I think so. 

WS: Then if I may offer two pieces of advice. Never turn your back on true love. Despite all the sacrifices and all the pain, David and I never once regretted it. 

P: Thank you. And the second

WS: Watch out for your family.

P: They mean well.

WS: No, they don't.

Welcome to the Crown: The Official Podcast. I'm Edith Bowman and this show will follow the third season of the Netflix original series The Crown episode by episode, taking you behind the scenes, speaking with many of the talented people involved, and diving deep into the stories. 

Today we're talking about Episode Nine, called ‘Imbroglio’ which means a sort of twisted and convoluted mess.  The death of the Duke of Windsor has had a profound effect on Prince Charles, who had come to recognise a true kinship with his great uncle.   Although Charles plans to propose marriage to his love interest Camilla Shand, the royal family intercedes and Charles is posted to the Caribbean whilst Camilla marries long-term partner Andrew Parker Bowles. 

We will cover specific events and scenes that feature in this episode, so if you haven’t watched episode nine yet, I suggest you do it now.  Or very soon.

I was very fortunate to spend some time on set, in the illustrious hair and makeup truck with designer Cate Hall, who had so many trade secrets to share with me…including details about oxygen machines, wig ovens, and her exclusive access to Princess Margaret’s actual hairdressers! 

But first I spoke with showrunner, writer and creator Peter Morgan about where we find ourselves in regards to the royal family, in 1972. 

E: Peter we're on episode nine now, which is entitled 

P: Imbroglio. 

E: Can we just can we do a quick kind of recap because there's a wonderful kind of connection between episode eight and nine. In terms of where we are with with with the Duke who is very close to 

P: It's a slightly unusual one in that it really does, you know, one episode leads straight into another whereas we've been doing a lot of standalone or individual episodes. And in this one, it really is, a little two parter. 

P: So, you know, the Duke of Windsor has died at the end of episode eight. And so in episode nine, the family gets together, they bury him in Frogmore. He was finally brought back to the United Kingdom, but only in a coffin. That's where Charles at that funeral suddenly realises the way that his family members are looking at him talking about him, that in some shape or form, he might have come to replace the Duke of Windsor and or the former Edward VIII, which is a connection I'm very keen to make. I mean, there may be people who dispute that, but I think there's enough there for me to feel comfortable making that comparison.

P: It’s funny. I looked at them as I was leaving. Mother, father, grandmother, aunt my sister and I suppose that's what they must look like to him 

C: Who? 

P: The last Prince of Wales. Poor lost soul we just buried. He wasn't like them. He was brighter. Wittier, more independent of thought, more true to himself and so they united against him. And in that moment as they looked at me in some God awful way I realised. I have just just replaced him

P: He would have seen himself in the Prince of Wales. He had himself been a Prince of Wales. And there are so many things about the two men that are worth drawing ones attention to and and Duke of Windsor. He's right up there with Princess Diana as a sort of trauma that both shaped the country but also shook the family. 

E: Yeah 

P: You know, his abdication is so unthinkable and it calls into question the absolute justification for monarchy existing whatsoever.

P: So there are really interesting parallels between him and Charles and it goes back to something that I started in Episode Two of this season, which is where Prince Philip and Elizabeth are talking about Margaret and they're talking about whether to give her any more duties whether they can trust her to and Phillip’s advice is no, you can't trust her because she’s dazzling and dangerous and then there are two strains to this family the dutiful and the dull, but also the dazzling and the dangerous and the Duke of Windsor, formerly, you know, formerly Edward VIII, he was definitely dazzling. There were a lot of things that really draw me to him. Not just as a writer, but also as a human being, you know, I, I feel for them because I feel for both him and for and for the Prince of Wales because I mean that this involves us doing a slight detour and going back to Queen Mary, if you'll allow me 

E: Yeah of course

P: And so the idea of keeping the British monarchy afloat required them to be perfect as a family

And, and that's where this idea that we're now used to, you know, about them striving or struggling with these ideas of perfection. That's where it all really started with that, you know, given that it would only take the slightest thing for people to want to overthrow the monarchy in the way that they had in Russia and other countries all over the world that they needed to be kind of just perfect. And so a lot of pressure was put on the eldest son, David, who became Edward the eighth and The Duke of Windsor. And he was deprived of parental love. I think he had an extremely challenging time with his father, and yet he was this naturally very gifted child, bright and charming and a really charismatic individual. And yet, charisma was unin, it was not just discouraged, it was abhorent because the minute he's an individual, he's bigger than the system or bigger than the idea and you have to subsume to the idea and the oppurtunities to live the lives to which they're best suited.

P: I think that Wallis Simpson, it was it was always rumoured that she had all these sexual arts that she'd learned on her trip to the Far East. You know, that was that was what people said. She once went to China and learned sexual arts.

E: Never let her in the country again.

P: She’d do devilish things. And I think it was just that she was nice to him. You know, and I think it was just that she didn't torment him. She was just nice to him. And I think accepted whatever his limitations were.

And it's also really interesting will I find as well as the Queen was really torn because, you know, he was they had a relationship before he, abdicates and then and 

P: the favourite uncle David. 

E: Yeah. And we we see points of that throughout every season really, she's really torn between her kind of personal emotions towards him and her kind of duty as how she should react to. 

P: I think she's probably because she didn't make to the same extent as her mother, the connection between Edward the 8th abdication and her own father's death, whereas I think the queen mother made a straightforward association between the two.

P: that there was a clear causality and connection but 

E: Because it's that scene between when she goes to visit him, and you know, and he's when he hears she's coming in the first thing he's like, he has to get out of that bed. And he has to get out that bed.

P: That’s absolutely true. 

E: Is it? 

P: Yeah, that's all on that’s in public record the fact that he was, you know, he put himself in a suit with the tubes coming out, you know, that very close to death and with, you know, attached to a number of tubes, he was still putting on his suit and standing up, you know, for the queen. 

P: That was actually filmed the day after Olivia won her Golden Globe, and it may be her Golden Globe. Maybe it was her Oscar. I think it was a Golden Globe. It involved in overnight flight. 

E: Oh, wow. 

P: So she'd come from America. And she, I know that she did that scene. And I remember watching. I remember thinking, oh no, we're not doing that scene The day after she. And she came back and nailed it. But she was utterly exhausted and had no sleep that night. 

E: but it's also I think, as well, this kind of introduction and the kind of way that the Royals deal with love. I mean, it's a brilliant soap opera within the Royal Family 

P: It’s an imbroglio

P: Is it true Do you love Andrew?

C: It’s complicated

P: Nothing complicated about it. It’s a yes or no answer. Do you love him? 

C: Yes. In a manner of speaking

P: I’m such a fool

C: But the more time I spent with you, the more I got to know you, the more my feelings changed

B: Transport is waiting sir. 

P: Obviously not enough

C: But that’s not true. Whatever anyone tells you, you must believe that my feelings for you are real.

P: Then why have we allowed them to do this?

C: Because apparently this way it will be better for everyone. In the long run. 

P:  It is said that all love stories are, in fiction, the great it's all about the impediments to the love and the threats and the blocks and and this is full of it. This has got so many it's it's like a it's like the Grand National in terms of the hurdles they have to get over. And we know that Mountbatten had become frustrated with Charles's antics and that he had, you know, he'd been sowing his seeds, which is what Mountbatten had originally encouraged him to do as a young man and 

E: Such a horrible phrase.

E: I want to talk about this the whole idea of partnerships because you know, this is part of it the idea of having the right person by your side be that in marriage be that in office, would that be the queen or prime ministers and the Queen and Philip or Charles and who he chooses and ends up with sort of thing that's a really fascinating and brilliant duel carraige way of relationships almost.

P: There's no question the show would no matter what we did, no matter how hard we tried, and I say this with no, it would be hard to avoid it being soapy, in some shape or form if we didn't constantly have one foot in the as it were business side of things and it’s very easy, you know, because it's so seductive to get drawn into this whole business of the family relationships, what do they really feel? Or what do they think about one that, you know, 

P: My first love as it were, in this whole ridiculous area that I've now become trapped in, was the Prime Minister's audience you know. So what happened was I, when I wrote those scenes in the original movie, The Queen, between Blair and the Queen, I had such fun and I felt free because, you know, they’re uminuited and you know, that there's this covenant of trust between Queen and Prime Minister that they never unless you're Boris Johnson, or David Cameron, but you know, they never say what happened, or what was said. And so I thought, well, that's great. I can go there. And I have a licence to cause trouble or imagine. 

E: Play 

P: Yeah, just to play for God's sake

E: The closer that we get as well to current day, present day so many of these people are still around and these are stories about around their lives. Do you think about that a lot? Is that at the kind of forefront of how you deal with things delicately but with integrity for your art and for dramatising it, 

P: I was thinking about this last night actually, in conversation with someone just on a just that, just at supper, and I've been reading about it a lot. I've been reading Hilary Mantel's Reath lectures recently, which are just sensational about the responsibility of the historian or the and then the novelist, , and I do think when people are dead, you as an artist, bring them back to life. And then there's an act of kindness in that

P: When they are alive, it is different and much more challenging. And I have to think long and hard. These are cultural and historical figures of enormous significance and documentaries or

Documentaries are one thing that but news or print journalism is not enough. I think that sometimes something really something really requires a dramatist or fiction or art to explore it because you can reach different truths. 

E: Absolutely. 

P: History cannot help but be a set of falling dominoes. And in the same way as all our own lives, you know, we are the product of whatever trauma our parents went through, and they've inflicted some of that, for better or for worse, and usually quite innocently on us, and we will continue to pass it on and everyone has to deal with what they're given and what they then take, you know

Q: If it was the occasional blackout, I would understand. But when it disrupts everyday life up and down the Country indeed threatens lives threatens law and order. I do begin to wonder whether we really have taken the right course of action.

H: Ma’am the government is not to blame. The National Union of mineworkers has been given every opportunity and has rejected offer after offer our last more than generous package with 48 million pounds was met with wholesale contempt. 

Q: But that does not explain the blackouts. I distinctly remember you assuring me that the government had stockpiled enough coal to weather any storm and yet here we are. 

H: It's true. The strikes have lasted longer than we anticipated. And the stubbornness of the miners and unions has been considerably more violent 

Q: I think we can safely say there has been stubborness on both sides. And one does wonder if we have fail to understand the scale of the miners anger indeed if we have failed to understand them as people.

P: And being like a, you know, like an eagle with two heads facing in the opposite direction the country really was like that. 

E: Yeah. Where was Elizabeth in that split? 

P: I think I projected upon her in one of the audience scenes that she was frustrated by the government not understanding the miners. And that's really that's just an educated guess. I don't know that that would be her position. I think also, if you infuse that with a strong Christian faith in the way that you know, Christianity and care and equality and a sense of brotherhood, as it were, she would find her way to a left of centre sensibility through her Christianity. 

E: It's also really interesting to think know that you're, it's in your lifetime. You know you talk about your vivid memories of coming home, blackouts. So, you’re now writing within a world where you exist, which is quite interesting to think about. 

P: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But But I, you know, that's the thing about the Queen as a symbol. She's such an all pervasive symbol that she is the connective tissue between your grandparents, your parents, you, your children and your own grandchildren. You know, she's been there now for so long.

E: I can't quite believe I'm here, but I'm sat in the main makeup truck 

CH: This is our King Unit 

E: The King unit! 

CH: We have two parallel units king and queen and this is our King unit main principal truck 

E: The whole thing for anyway being a fan of the show has felt like with season three and the start of it so much changed not just the cast the whole aesthetic almost of the show has really changed 

C: Yeah, and moving into a new era. I mean, actually we we sort of traversed a huge amount of time in season three. So for us it was it was also about trying to plot how you move through visually very different eras to bring us up to the start of season 4.  

E: Yeah, I've just been flicking through one of your many Bibles as you title them. Is this where you start?

C: I don’t know if that's sacrilegious so I’m really lucky with the crown and the the investment in research is so strong that I started working obviously many, many months before we started shooting to research, and just really bedded in with all the images and loads of video archive and had to create these books really for myself as a reference, because when you get going on a job this big with 200 odd cast, and like I said traversing periods over 13 years, you sort of need an anchor to know when you are going to move, when you are going to change, when do the shapes change, when do your crowd change

C: And also plotting the lives of these really well known principal characters. So for me, it was about becoming as familiar as I possibly could be with all the images and using them as an anchor. But then also, they were a springboard and they were sort of instinctive, 

E: but it's a fine line, isn't it between getting the look right for the historical character, but then you also need to be a little bit free for the actor to be that character. Does that make sense?

C: Sure. Absolutely. And it really felt like a process and one that I think we've become quite good at. It's a sort of a niche thing where you're, you're trying to have integrity, you're trying you're really committed to the original character and what they look like

But you're also dealing with a human being and no one on the crown is interested in mimicry. 

E: Yeah 

C: And we certainly felt like the more barriers we put in front of them, you know, we tried we tried contact lenses with Olivia. And it was hysterical. 

E: Really

C: It was so obvious that it wasn't a go-er because for a start, we sort of had to kind of crowbar them like she had to be pinned down. And then they were crowbarred in. And actually, she does everything with her eyes. 

E: but loads of wigs I see around here as well.  

C: And really wigs are our biggest tool because they're playing really recognisable people, and the biggest tool we have to alter them visually is their wig. And from my experience now what I would say is that shape is everything. And if you can create a hair shape and an outline of a character and costume do the same thing that says, This is absolutely without question that person, then I feel like we're in a good place because to be honest, after that the acting is everything in the voice is everything. 

E: That's really interesting 

C: So for me, 

E: it was like getting the silhouette right

C: Right for me the silhouette is it and that's the same for period. So you know, you can tell kind of unmistakeably, every period has its own shape and silhouette. And we subtly alter those and we try to do it kind of almost episode by episode so that it doesn’t feel like the big visual klunky change. But, gradually you are saying you are moving through time. 

E: Well that idea of kind of, aging and de-aging people it’s a very different, very different procesdures. Is one harder than the other?

C: Yeah. I mean, if I knew how to really de age people, I'd be very wealthy. 

E: Yeah

C: But there are tricks we use, we would give the principal ladies oxygen facials. And and we tried not to get too hung up on the number because again, it's a performance. 

E: Yeah.

C: But, where we could it was more about creating a breadth of story period rather than a kind of specific you are going to look 35. When you know, which is not possible. So by using that kind of advanced skincare, we could give ourselves a lovely base to start from. And then I think ageing is is easier because you're kind of using what people have got and then and then pushing it shading it using it a bit further. 

C: And we use the wigs to age people a lot because it's very easy to add grey hair for example. 

E: Yeah,

C: The tricky thing for the Royals is of course that actually most of them don't change. So with the queen, a lot of my when I've been doing interviews the questions and said you know the Queen's hairstyle doesn't change. But in fact we we subtly we did kind of, it's more boufy in the 70s it’s more solid. It’s more of a lego hairstyle

E: That sort of high fringe thing

C: So yeah. It's got more height, it's more square. It's more textured, it's less sort of flicky and curly. And actually she was dyeing her hair and she had grey temples. So we started to very gradually as the wigs would go back to the wig maker to have their fronts removed and replaced, which is part of their regular maintenance. We would gradually add in more grey hairs through the temples and then when the wigs come off at night, they need redressing and baking in the oven. You know they're set and baked in the wig oven

E: They get baked in a wig oven? And so this is this is the lingo that nobody knows about. So the wigs, obviously a knotted hair by hair on to a wicked Eyes okay and then they are blocked up onto a weak block with glue which is a ribbon and pins and then we wet set them but the wigs and knotted hair by hair in different directions to mimic a hairline, including mohair, which we use around the very, very front to soften the look on camera. And then basically once they are Nottage, they come to us they've already been fitted onto the actor Yeah, then they are cut maybe coloured a bit more of necessary. And then for every performance, they are wet set on rollers in different directions for different shapes and period. Yeah, and then baked in an oven you know, to a really sort of crispy finish typically and then they they call down and then they're dressed out by the team day to day into different looks and shapes. So Helena, Olivia, all of our different characters will have multiple weeks to allow for dressing for different things. Different looks because obviously can't do everything yeah finish on rap at the end of the day

C: So we started to very gradually as the wigs would go back to the wig maker to have their fronts removed and replaced, which is part of their regular maintenance. We would gradually add in more grey hairs through the temples and then when the wigs come off at night, they need redressing and baking in the oven. You know they're set and baked in the wig oven

E: They get, the wigs get baked in an oven?

C: And so this is this is the lingo that nobody knows about. So the wigs, obviously a knotted hair by hair on to wig lace. And then they are blocked up onto a wig block with glue which is a ribbon and pins and then we wet set them, but the wigs and knotted hair by hair in different directions to mimic a hairline,

E: Oh my god

C: Including mohair, which we use around the very, very front to soften the look on camera. And then basically once they are knotted, they come to us they've already been fitted onto the actor. Then they are cut maybe coloured a bit more of necessary. And then for every performance, they are wet set on rollers in different directions for different shapes and periods. And then baked in an oven you know, to a really sort of crispy finish typically and then they they cool down and then they're dressed out by the team day to day into different looks and shapes. So Helena, Olivia, all of our different characters will have multiple wigs to allow for dressing for different scenes and different looks because obviously can't do everything yeah when you finish on wrap at the end of the day

E: Is there like a specific wig oven?

C: Yes, this is the wig oven, which is this erm it’s actually a 1950s vintage clothes dryer.

E: Oh wow. 

C: And we have wig ovens on every truck

E: Basically, it looks like a giant Recycle Bin basically. But 

C: Yeah but it heats up. And all the men's wigs will get baked for a shorter amount of time. But you can see where we use pins to dress them to get the hair moving in different directions. And then what happens as you cut the lace as far back as possible so that when you glue it to the forehead, you can't see it. As you're cutting it back, you start to lose your fine hairs with every application and removal and wash and set. And so eventually you lose hair after hair after hair until what you're left with is a really hard edge which you can't really carry off on camera. And at that point, the entire front of the wig is removed and replaced with a new front and all of that hairline is individually knotted again. So part of the the stress of filming on this schedule is trying to manage that refront schedule, because it goes off for at least a week maybe two. Film lace is a very, you would describe it by denier like you would tights. And for high definition, it's the finest denier lace possible so it’s tiny, tiny little holes in this. I don't even know if it is nylon, you know, I should ask the wig maker because I should know that.

C: Yeah, so we were really fortunate with season three in that we were connected with Princess Margaret and the Kent's hairdressers in Mayfair, who are still working together. They’re two friends who work in a Mayfair salon in their 70s. And they now do one week a month. And they still have all their same clients from the 60s. 

E: Wow. 

C: And Joseph has actually written a book about Margeret but he used to go to Mystique with her. And they brought in a collection of her hair pieces, a lock of her hair so we could look at the colour. 

E: Couple of others that I wanted to talk about specifically Joshua O’Connor as Prince Charles 

C: I say this all the time because it comes up in every interview, about how extraordinary he looks. And it's it's a haircut and a parting.

C: It's all we do but the parting is fastidious, it’s measured with a tape measure.

E: Is it! 

C: Yeah, absolutely. So we measure 

E: What are we talking? How many centimetres?

C: I mean, I couldn’t actually tell you that because I don’t look after him, shamefully, but yeah no, they measure they measure from the ear up and then the length of the parting and it goes all the way down to the crown.

E: Ear pieces?

C: Yeah no, it’s just his own glorious ears. 

C: Another favourite moment for me was Harold Wilson. We have this totally heartbreaking scene where he tells the Queen that he has Alzheimer's and that he has to resign. And for us we had this wonderful thing which again rarely happens where there is an episode break, two episodes break where you don't see him so you're able to effect a change without it being difficult schedule wise. And and Louise Coles who looked after Wilson just did the most beautiful sympathetic subtle special effects makeup. That kind of broke my heart. And I know it's just makeup like it all is. And mainly It was about acting, but the kind of tender touch with which she picked that level. It was it was a really beautiful moment. And I remember seeing it on camera and just being blown away by it.

E: Sometimes those subtleties can be incredibly powerful that's the thing. One of the characters that really stood out for me and I wanted to talk to you about as well was was Wallis Simpson who, you know, made up made a massive impact in the world. But I think in terms of performance in this is great as well.

C: I adored Geraldine, and again, the casting, can you imagine when that casting came in and you just though Ah, of course. And she she's really fun, she's really playful. She has these two, like her dad Charlie Chaplin. She has these two dots underneath her eyes, which she puts eyeliner on and I thought they were tattoos but they're not then these natural kind of beauty spots under her eyes and it's extraordinary. 

E: And her dad had them as well?

C: Yeah and we cover those up actually for, you don't notice them. But she she has this incredible sort of, I felt kind of almost bird like manner about her. And she came to the again she came to the fittings, as most of our cast do very open openly and we just really went for it and I loved the you know, in England we have a very kind of apologetic stance with makeup. We don't like to admit that we're doing makeup and we like to do everything beautifully subtly. And of course with Wallis it was a real look and it was really sort of outspoken and and Geraldine just was just kind of mustard keen to go for it. So we did this kind of very spidery eyebrows and loads and loads of mascara and eye makeup. And I thought she wore it very, very well. 

E: Yeah, yeah, I agree. Well I think you've done an extraordinary job, you and your team and thank you for your time.

C: Thank you so much. It’s lovely to meet you

I’m Edith Bowman and my special thanks to our guests on this episode, Peter Morgan and Cate Hall.

The Crown The official podcast is produced by Netflix and Somethin’ Else in association with Left Bank pictures. 

Join us next time when we go behind the scenes of the final episode of Season Three called Cri de coeur, which focuses on Princess Margaret, her failing marriage, and the moments leading up to the Silver Jubilee.

Q: Ask yourself the time I've been on this road What have I actually achieved?

M: You've been calm, stable, and 

Q: useless and unhelpful. This country was still great when I came to the throne and now look so much for the second Elizabethan age, which Winston talked about. All that's happened on my watch is the place has falling apart

M:It’s only fallen apart if we say it has. That's the thing about the monarchy. We paper over the cracks. And if what we do is loud and grand and confident enough no one will notice if all around us its fallen apart. That's the point of us. Not us.. You. You cannot flinch. Because if you show a single crack, well see it isn’t a crack, a chasm, and we’d all fall in. So you must hold it all together. 

Q: Must I do that alone?
M: There is only one Queen. 

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