Greetings, reader!
Last month saw the release of the fifth and second-last season of Netflix's historical drama The Crown. I had many potential list ideas in mind for discussing the series in honor of the new season, and ended up polling my Instagram followers for which one would be most interesting. The people have spoken, and the winner ended up being a ranking of the 10 greatest acting performances in the series. The Crown is an exceptionally well-cast show, as it has faced the challenge of having to re-cast its main characters every few seasons due to the timeline being so vast, but they've done a remarkable job with it. Out of all the acting performances in the show, these are my favorites!
Here are my honorable mentions: Jared Harris as King George VI (Season 1), John Lithgow as Winston Churchill (Seasons 1-3), Matthew Goode as Tony Armstrong-Jones (Season 2), Erin Doherty as Princess Anne (Seasons 3-4), Gillian Anderson as Margaret Thatcher (Season 4), Jonathan Pryce as Prince Philip (Season 5), Jonny Lee Miller as John Major (Season 5), Dominic West as Prince Charles (Season 5).
10. Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana (Season 5)
The third and final main cast isn't quite as represented on this list as the first and second cast, and this is very likely explained by the fact that the latest cast has only one season under their belt, whereas the original cast and the one that followed have the experience of two full seasons to their advantage. I'm guessing that if I were to re-do this list after season 6 has eventually come out, members of this newest cast would move up a few spots. However, a few select names from season 5 have made it into the top 10 despite this disadvantage, and one of them is Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Di herself!
The shoes of such a famous figure, nothing short of mythical in terms of legacy and stature in modern history, are hard to fill - yet already from the season 5 trailer, it seemed clear that Debicki was right for the role. As Peter Morgan's script paints royal figures in realistic moral shades of gray, Debicki's portrayal was never going to be the mega-idealized fairytale Diana nor the villain that many royalists saw her as, but rather a nuanced individual with an admittedly big heart yet her own demons and such. She conveys all of this well, making for a complex performance that is certainly one of season 5's best.
9. Helena Bonham Carter as Princess Margaret (Seasons 3-4)
Even among the high standard of this series where pretty much every well-known British actor has been cast as some iconic historical figure, Helena Bonham Carter stands out as one of the most acclaimed names to be involved in The Crown. Her portrayal of Princess Margaret in the show's middle seasons would be even a few spots higher, if it wasn't for the minor criticism that on some occasions, the large-scale melodrama in her performance goes a bit over-the-top. It's a fine line to walk, as the real-life persona of Princess Margaret as well as the show's iteration of her certainly call for a good chunk of dramatics - but on a few occasions, I'd say that Bonham Carter takes it a tad further than it needs to be.
That being said, she still makes it into the top 10, because her Margaret has many, many moments of elite, world-class acting and for most of the time, the dramatic delivery is just right. She plays the role in a less likable fashion than predecessor Vanessa Kirby, but this makes perfect sense, because Margaret's arch in the series has a major focus on the 'wild and idealistic young woman grows bitter with age after being wronged by her family and the system multiple times' angle. And because the script makes the reasons behind her occasionally obnoxious behavior clear, it is easy to feel her even in those moments, especially since Bonham Carter manages to convey just the right undertones of sympathy and humanity beneath the more on-the-surface bitterness and arrogance of her role.
8. Emma Corrin as Princess Diana (Season 4)
On paper, the season 4 Diana should be a much easier role to play than season 5 Diana, as there is so much less complexity and high drama and much more two-dimensional idealism and naivety in the role of 1980's Diana. That being said, Emma Corrin's performance dazzled me with its overall memorability, accuracy and emotional power even more than Elizabeth Debicki's, as great as the latter was in its own right.
First of all, while many of The Crown's casting decisions have looked startlingly much like the real-life counterparts, Corrin takes it to a whole new level. I'm not very well-versed in royal history and I haven't seen all that much footage of the real Diana, yet this performance still had me going 'jeez, she is the young woman I've seen in those old news clips and newspaper covers' multiple times, as she just really managed to capture her essence in a startling manner. Her much-anticipated debut scene, where she talks with Prince Charles from behind a houseplant while in costume, gave me some serious goosebumps, as there was immediately something special about Emma Corrin in that role. She makes the role so vulnerable and lovable in those first episodes, that it is truly heartbreaking to follow the suffering she undergoes later in the season.
7. Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth II (Season 5)
Okay, acting is a form of art, and acting any role is difficult (take it from someone who struggled to get into character as a background janitor with two lines of dialogue in a local play). Portraying a historical character is a tremendous challenge, because you have to balance interpreting the real-life person with their mannerisms and what you know of them, and simply interpreting a written character in a script. When Olivia Colman took over as Queen Elizabeth II in season 3 of The Crown, she had to balance being believable as the version of Elizabeth written into the season 3 script by Peter Morgan, being believable as the real-life person we've all seen on TV, and being believable as being an older version of the same character that Claire Foy played for two seasons.
So, when Imelda Staunton took over in season 5, she was basically playing four characters at once: an older version of Colman's Queen Elizabeth, a much older version of Foy's Elizabeth, a take on the real Elizabeth, and an interpretation of the Elizabeth that was written for season 5 of this series. Add to that the fact that me and millions of other Harry Potter fans went into the season absolutely flinching at the sight of Staunton, because of her performance as one of the most despicable fictional characters ever created in Order of the Phoenix (2007), and Staunton simply had to be likable enough to win us over, and you get a good sense of just how much pressure went into this role.
Yet she absolutely nails it. She picks up enough nuances from both Foy's and Colman's performances that she feels effortlessly credible as the same person as the one they've played. and as someone who has grown up knowing only the elderly version of the late Queen, I had no problem buying Staunton as being the funny old lady I had seen on the news several times. With all that pressure, the accomplished actress delivered, and I can't wait to see more of her Elizabeth in the sixth and final season.
6. Vanessa Kirby as Princess Margaret (Seasons 1-2)
I don't often besmirch my street cred as an analytical film/TV reviewer with shallow thoughts, but I've got to admit it: comparing this performance with the others was extra difficult, because Vanessa Kirby is so damn beautiful and I was quite in love with her take on Margaret for the first two seasons, therefore making the character very compelling to watch even when putting acting skill aside. So it's hard to be completely objective on this one.
However, unless I'm deluded by my (admittedly fantastic) taste in women, I'm quite sure that Kirby's performance would be up this high on my list even if it wasn't for the hotness factor - young Margaret is a terribly complex role to play, and the actress does the role justice with her multi-faceted performance. Her Margaret is idealistic yet cynical, a romantic yet a pragmatist, hopeful yet pessimistic, and all of these multitudes are believably part of the same person. Her take on Margaret is fresh and unique, and the character's on-screen chemistry with sister Elizabeth (Claire Foy) and love interest Tony Armstrong-Jones (Matthew Goode) is off the charts.
5. Tobias Menzies as Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (Seasons 3-4)
Anyone who has watched HBO's severely underrated Rome (2005-2007) will know that Tobias Menzies is one hell of an actor, and capable of much more than the fairly limited acting we see from him in his best-known role, Edmure Tully in Game of Thrones (2011-2019). Getting cast as the Duke of Edinburgh in the middle section of The Crown was certainly a big chance for Menzies to further showcase what an amazing actor he is, and the man surely delivered.
I'll admit that his take on the role grew on me quite slowly - a few episodes into season 3, I wasn't completely convinced. He certainly looked the role, but the performance didn't jump at me with the amazement that many other roles in this series have done from the get-go. However, as the storyline of season 3 focused more on Philip towards its tail end, and the viewer got used to him in the role after getting a while to detach oneself from the original cast, Menzies' brilliant nuances and steadily classy acting started to show.
For me, the point of realizing his performance is in fact one of the show's best was the season 3 episode Moondust, where Philip undergoes a midlife crisis following the Moon Landing, and gains a peculiar obsession towards the Apollo 11 astronauts. The episode is one of the deepest character studies The Crown has done (which is saying something, as usually about half of a season's episodes are in-depth looks at the life of one chosen character), and Menzies just seemed to make the show's iteration of Philip more complex and engaging with every passing line of dialogue. By the end of season 4, I was so attached to his version on Philip that it took some deep breaths to get used to the idea of Jonathan Pryce in the role for the last two seasons.
4. Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II (Seasons 3-4)
In many ways, the first cast change had to be the hardest. By season 5, we all knew what we were getting into and the idea of the cast changing was a familiar concept. But when season 3 rolled around, the world had seen only one Elizabeth in The Crown, as well as one Philip, one Margaret et cetera. And the showrunners faced the challenge of finding such great actors, that viewers would accept them as the same people and let go of their attachment to the previous versions. Not an easy job, but my God, they sure came through.
All it took was one scene, or one shot really. Season 3 opens with a painting of Queen Elizabeth (as a young woman, thus modeled after the Claire Foy version) being presented to a middle-aged Elizabeth, as the camera angle dramatically shifts to show us Olivia Colman in the role. And not for a second did I think 'Woah, this is weird, it's gonna be difficult to get used to different people in the roles'. I immedialy accepted her as Elizabeth, and that is a mark of strong casting right there. Throughout the third and fourth seasons, Colman would continue to make the role her own while staying true to her predecessor as well as the real-life person they were both portraying, and she carried that portion of the series with spectacular skill.
Before we go to the top three, it should be noted that putting these three neck-and-neck roles into order was the hardest part of making this list. They come so close to each other in quality, that basically they'd deserve a joint first place. I have put them into order for now, but I wanted to note that really they're all winners.
3. Josh O'Connor as Prince Charles (Seasons 3-4)
For the first half of season 3, we don't see Prince Charles. This was probably because the character was shifting from puberty to adulthood, a period in which your look changes so rapidly that they would've had to re-cast him numerous times in the process. Anyways, when we last see him in season 2, Charles is still a young pre-teen boy - and as season 3 went on and on with his loud absence, the anticipation grew for meeting the show's adult version of the man who is now King. Finally, season 3's sixth episode opens with a scene of Charles rehearsing for a play, and immediately, there is something downright magical in how Josh O'Connor plays the role. The rest of the episode goes on to be very Charles-focused, and perhaps the best-acted individual episode of the entire series.
One very impressive thing that Josh O'Connor does is making viewers like myself feel for Charles, and even like him. Not that I've followed royal shenanigans enough to form proper opinions, but from all that I've gathered, I never was a big Charles fan as he always seemed like quite a dud. However, The Crown does a fantastic job of humanizing him while staying true to the facts: we see many unlikable and frustrating moments from him (especially in season 4), but we also see what a sensitive, vulnerable young man with a big heart there was underneath it all.
And in this case, I don't even see it as the actor properly interpreting the script to convey these nuances; no disrespect for Peter Morgan's writing, but in the case of Charles, I view the success of the character in seasons 3&4 to be very much thanks to the actor's own chops and nuances. The Charles that is written can be a bit bland sometimes, but O'Connor makes every scene interesting and complex, with his facial expressions and delicate delivery of lines conveying so much of what the character has been through and where he's coming from.
2. Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth II (Seasons 1-2)
I'm guessing that if you took a hundred The Crown fans and asked their favorite version of Elizabeth from the series, 90 of them would think long and hard because they love all three, yet would end up singling out Claire Foy. Having discussed the series with numerous friends and acquaintances, as well as reading up on the discourse around the series online, this just seems to be the general consensus. "They're all so good and shouldn't really be compared - but, gun to my head, if I had to pick one, well, Claire Foy".
And no wonder why. While Colman and Staunton faced extra layers of challenge when playing the character in a way that had to take previous versions into consideration, the show's original Elizabeth also faced her unique challenge, as the season 1 Elizabeth undergoes far more character development than in any other season. While Colman and Staunton played a familiar version of the familiar person who has been rocking the monarchy in similar fashion for decades, Claire Foy had to play a young and unassuming princess who the weight of the monarchy is very suddenly thrust upon, as she must tough out the pressure, expectations and sheer confusion of this world while playing it cool and calm in order to reassure the nation that looked up to her.
And she does this with elegance and grace. I also find her version of Elizabeth to be the most likable and humorous - The Crown never was a masterclass in TV comedy, but any series is bound to have its amusing moments, and in this five-season run, I believe that a vast majority of the funniest moments come from the chipper nuances in Claire Foy's performance.
1. Matt Smith as Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (Seasons 1-2)
Not gonna lie, the feminist in me is a tad disappointed that my #1 favorite performance from the series where three different women have played the protagonist is still somehow a man. But I can't help it - while all three Elizabeths have dazzled me, no role performance in The Crown is quite as complete and magnificent as Matt Smith's take on a young Prince Philip.
Playing a morally complex character is a difficult task - if you're too amiable with it, the more questionable momens will seem unauthentic, but if you go too anti-hero with it, the likable moments will fall flat. And even in the performances where one masters multiple sides of the moral spectrum, these instances might often feel a bit disjointed as if the actor was playing two (or more) different characters. But Matt Smith's Prince Philip is one of the most pitch-perfect examples of believably playing a morally gray character that I have ever seen; he can be a total asshole in one scene and a thoroughly lovable class act in the very next one, and both instances will clearly be part of the same, consistent character.
Between his work on Doctor Who (1963-1989; 2005-Present), House of the Dragon (2022-Present) and this series, Smith is definitely one of the most brilliantly unique and spectacularly talented actors working in television today. And many might understandably consider his complicated, vibrant and quite mesmerizing take on the Duke of Edinburgh to be the (pun very much intended) crowning achievement of his career.
Thank you for reading! While this topic won my poll, 'Top 10 episodes of The Crown' came so close that I decided to write that one up as well, so tune in next week for more royal shenanigans!
No comments:
Post a Comment