I enjoyed season one of The Crown for the most part, especially the domestic drama happening behind closed doors at Buckingham Palace. So I am incredibly into the trailer for season two, which is almost entirely tidbits about the domestic drama that went down in the 1960s. There’s only a brief glimpse of Jeremy Northam as Prime Minister Anthony Eden, and as much as I like my Mr. Knightley, I am glad that the focus seems to be on the royal soap opera, and not politics. Winston Churchill is gone, now please, let us not go back to decorum and politics. Let us instead bask in court intrigue and personal disappointments. This trailer is so soapy, all it’s missing is an evil twin with a mustache.
We now know that this will be Claire Foy’s last season as Queen Elizabeth II, as Olivia Colman will step in to play the queen in later seasons (and later years), so I am dedicated to enjoying every second of Foy’s impressionistic take on a public figure we all know so well. We know the broad strokes of the story of Princess Margaret’s doomed marriage with photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones—Matthew Goode is PERFECT casting to play a sexually liberated dashing artist—which will certainly make for the soapiest plotline in the season. But what stands out most is Elizabeth telling off Prince Philip in private. The Crown’s best moments in its first season were the imagined ones happening amongst the private lives of this very public family, and so far season two is choosing to show us a lot more of that, and much less political coaching. Good, I’m totally here for Elizabeth On Edge.
Here are Claire Foy and John Lithgow at the 2017 AMD British Academy Britannia Awards last week.
