A handful of royals reportedly watch The Crown, Netflix's hit show depicting the life of Queen Elizabeth II. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle apparently binged the series while cooking. Princess Eugenie said she felt "very proud to watch it." Even the Queen herself is a fan (at least according to British tabloids).
The newest royal to add The Crown to their Netflix queue is Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, wife of Prince Charles.
The couple reportedly hole up in Birkhall, the Scottish estate formerly owned by the Queen Mother, to watch their television shows, Camilla's nephew, Ben Elliot, told Vanity Fair.
He says Camilla has privately confessed to watching—and enjoying—the program. Although, he adds, she “wasn’t looking forward to the bits to come.”
Elliot is likely referring to the fact that Camilla's character will be introduced in season three.
At the BFI & Radio Times Television Festival in April, producer Suzanne Mackie revealed that Camilla, who went on to become Prince Charles's second wife and the Duchess of Cornwall after a rather scandalous affair, appears in the upcoming season.
Camilla will be played by Call the Midwife's Emerald Fennell. "I'm absolutely over the moon and completely terrified," Fennell says about her casting. "To be joining so many hugely talented people on The Crown. I absolutely love Camilla, and am very grateful that my teenage years have well prepared me for playing a chain-smoking serial snogger with a pudding bowl hair cut."
The forthcoming season will cover the royals from 1964 to the early '70s, which lines up precisely with the timeline of when Camilla and Charles first met.
They were introduced at a polo match at Windsor Great Park in 1970. They bonded over a love of polo and the outdoors and Camilla even joked about the fact that her great-grandmother had had an affair with King Edward VII, saying, “My great-grandmother was the mistress of your great-great-grandfather. I feel we have something in common.”
They struck up a romance, but Charles had to leave her to serve in the Royal Navy for eight months. When he returned, Camilla was engaged to someone else. In 1973, she married Andrew Parker Bowles, an Army cavalry officer, who had previously dated Prince Charles’s sister, Princess Anne. Of course, Charles and Camilla remained friends over the years—Prince Charles even became her child's godfather.
They would later pick their relationship back up.
Since season three won't cover the '80s, we won't meet Lady Diana Spencer, who began dating Prince Charles in 1980. The couple married the next year, with Camilla reportedly in attendance. According to Charles’s authorized biography, he began an affair with Camilla five years after, in 1986.
In the mid 90s, both couples divorced, and Diana tragically died in a car accident in Paris in 1997. In 2005, Charles and Camilla, announced their engagement 35 years after they first met. They wed in a civil ceremony with Prince William as the best man.
There's still no release date yet for The Crown's third season, but earlier this summer, the Europe Press reported that the show is still filming and looking for extras in Spain, seeking both men and women between the ages of 25 and 65, with no visible tattoos.
Forbes reported that the Andalusia region of the country "has been chosen reportedly because it still has well-preserved examples of 1960s architecture that will be used as key locations visited by Queen Elizabeth during that decade."
Showrunners confirmed that season three and four are being filmed back-to-back.
"I’m writing them all at the moment," The Crown creator Peter Morgan said at a BAFTA Masterclass. "We’ve got Olivia [Colman to play the Queen], which is fantastic, and now we’re just embarking on the process of casting."
From: Town & Country US
