For two hours Netflix’s Tudum Global Event previewed the best of what’s to come to the streaming platform in both film and TV. One of the exclusives included the first look at season five of The Crown in a new teaser. View the short clip below.
Elizabeth Debicki (Tenet, Widows) and Dominic West (The Affair, The Wire) will star as Princess Diana and Prince Charles in season that will explore a strenuous time within the royal family. From the teaser, it is apparent that the show will chronicle the public unraveling of Prince Charles and Lady Di’s union. Deadline reports Charles’ divorce will not be the only one examined as his siblings Princess Anne and Prince Andrew also dissolved their marriages during this time.
The timing of the fifth season’s release may seem questionable given the recent passing of Queen Elizabeth II; however, the season was already set to premiere this year. According to Deadline, both creator Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon, Rush) and executive producer Stephen Daldry (The Hours, Billy Elliot) had discussions early on in the series about how to maneuver in the event that the Queen would pass. In acknowledgment of her legacy and to the royal family, production for season six was paused on the day of her death and her funeral.
Deadline reports that season five will star Imelda Staunton (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Freedom Writers) as the Queen and Jonathan Pryce (The Tw Popes, Game of Thrones) as Prince Phillip Duke of Edinburgh, who are now both deceased. Lesley Manville (Phantom Thread, Let Him Go) will portray Princess Margaret and Marcia Warren (No Place Like Home, Vicious) will play the Queen Mother. Camilla Parker Bowles, the current Queen Consort to King Charles III, will be played by Olivia Williams (Sabotage, The Sixth Sense).
The series has also cast Khalid Abdalla (The Kite Runner, The Square) and Salim Daw (Let It Be Morning, Oslo) in crucial roles, via Deadline. Abdalla will portray the boyfriend of Princess Diana, Dodi Al-Fayed while Daw will play his father, Mohamed Al-Fayed. Their casting confirms that the series will conclude with the tragic 1997 car accident that took both Diana and Dodi’s lives.
Season five of The Crown will premiere on November 9 only on Netflix.