'The Crown' Season 4: 20 interesting facts you need to know about royal drama's future episodes on Netflix
Netflix's 'The Crown' is arguably one of the most fascinating series on the platform. Featuring the life of Britain's longest-reigning monarch, series brings about all the intrigue and fervor showing us that sometimes, fact is stranger than fiction. Over the past three seasons, two women have played the role of Queen Elizabeth II. Claire Foy played the role in the first two seasons before Olivia Coleman took over. Coleman continues the role in Season 4, and will be replaced by Imelda Staunton in the next season.
Shooting for 'The Crown' is complex and set in large and grand locations — of course, we expect nothing less. So viewers might not be as shocked to learn that there are about 90 locations that have been used for the filming of the fourth season — about three-fourths of the season is shot on location. Some of the most challenging locations are the Royal family's residences — there are 23 in total, including Buckingham Palace (London), Windsor Castle (Windsor), Palace of Holyroodhouse (Edinburgh), Hillsborough Castle (N. Ireland), Sandringham House (Norfolk) and more. However, only eight royal residences are featured in the Netflix show. These are Buckingham Palace, Balmoral, Windsor Castle, Kensington Palace, Sandringham, Highgrove, Clarence House and Gatcombe Park.
It is not just the Royal residences that are vast in numbers. Did you know that as Princess Margaret, Helena Bonham Carter used 12 cigarette holders? However, Carter had a favorite which she would often use — a thick horn cigarette holder. The only time she would use a daintier holder would be during a party scene on occasion. She had approximately 8 different antique cigarette cases, but again she had a couple of favorites that she used more regularly than others. While 'The Crown' features mainly two corgis — as the Queen is famous for adoring the dogs —, the Netflix show also kept additional corgis to form a larger family/royal household group of corgis for bigger setups, including corgi puppies.
Here are some other figures that demonstrate just how vast the production or the show was. There were around 400 total costumes made for the fourth season — of which 120 was made for the Queen and 80 for Diana (Emma Corrin), of which 17 were for the Australia tour. It would take around two or three weeks for a costume design to go from sketch to screen. Each character had six wigs made for them and it would take three weeks to create each wig — it was Princess Margaret who had the most variety of hairstyles.
There are two cars the Queen drives in the show — a Rolls Royce Phantom VI and an S2 Land Rover in Balmoral. There are approximately 70 silver photo frames of different characters for all the sets. There were about 1,500 uniforms featured in the fourth season — for Trooping of the Colour and there were a lot of foreign uniforms for Mountbatten’s funeral. The biggest uniform day was the Falklands Victory Parade which featured all three forces. The Queen has 6 handbags. Most of these were bought from the company The Queen actually uses.
'The Crown' also featured many intricate props. The props most challenging to procure were food with the right packaging and old mobile phones. The props for the Queen's desk were carefully and thoughtfully planned out and the series shows her desk adorned with various racing-related objects - a horseshoe pen holder, horse hoof letter opener, bespoke Royal ER gilt embossed stationery blotters and diaries, lots of photos of her family (particularly her father). There were also bespoke leather frames made — again with the Royal crest embossed on them.
'The Crown' Season 4 is available to stream on Netflix on Sunday, November 15, at 12 am PST.