The Cast of ‘The Crown’ Rules the Screen

As we prepare for the 30th Screen Actors Guild Awards, Backstage is breaking down this year’s film and television ensemble work for your consideration. For more voting guides and roundups, we’ve got you covered here.

Main Cast: Khalid Abdalla, Meg Bellamy, Elizabeth Debicki, Lesley Manville, Ed McVey, Jonathan Pryce, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West, Olivia Williams
Casting by: Robert Sterne 
Created by: Peter Morgan 
Distributed by: Netflix

Creator Peter Morgan makes bold moves right from the start of the final season of “The Crown,” opening with a random man walking his dog along a Parisian sidewalk. He looks up just in time to see a Mercedes recklessly speed beneath an underpass. Though we hear the moment the car containing Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed crashes into a pillar, the camera stays trained on the bystander.

After this shocking opening, part one of Season 6 jumps back to the leadup and aftermath of the deaths of the People’s Princess and her boyfriend. The back half moves the story of the surviving royal family through to 2005.

This dramatic installment of Morgan’s typically reserved series may not, to use a quintessentially British phrase, be everybody’s cup of tea, portraying an era in recent history that still haunts many. And though the jury is out on the show’s interpretation of events, there’s no doubt about the talent of its cast. 

Season 6 picks up the story of the three main players—Queen Elizabeth II (Imelda Staunton), Diana (Elizabeth Debicki), and Prince Charles (Dominic West)—right where we left off. But keen-eyed viewers will catch subtle differences in the way the actors perform their characters. 

Though she only appears in the first part of the season, Debicki displays a much broader range than we’ve seen from her in the role, playing the many sides of Diana: doting mother, seductive lover, and jilted ex-wife. On Season 5, she was raw and tortured; now, everything she’s gone through has made her older and wiser. The actor even gets the chance to display flashes of humor, like when Diana comforts Dodi (a stellar Khalid Abdalla) in the time leading up to his marriage (he was engaged to another woman when he first met the princess).

Morgan’s interpretation infuses Charles and Diana’s post-divorce relationship with unexpected tenderness, beautifully executed by Debicki and West. The latter brings vulnerability to the outwardly stoic prince, particularly when it comes to his long-standing relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles (a highly watchable Olivia Williams). As Princess Margaret (Lesley Manville) acutely observes, he’s “relaxed and confident and entirely himself” in her company.

Manville performs her character’s physical decline with grace and sensitivity on the standout eighth episode. Outside of the family, Bertie Carvel returns as Tony Blair; he nails the prime minister’s mannerisms, especially in his awkward meetings with the queen.

But what of the next generation? As Prince William and Kate Middleton, newcomers Ed McVey and Meg Bellamy knock it out of the park with their sweet depiction of the young couple falling in love at university. From encounters in the library and the swimming pool to that famous fashion show, the chemistry between the pair is enough to warrant a spinoff. McVey has rich material to work with as William grieves the death of his mother, grows up, and meets his future wife.

As expected, the final season retains all the shock and subtly we know and love. “The Crown” is dead; long live “The Crown.”