The Crown is coming to an end, with the second part of its final ever chapter landing on Netflix on December 14.
Launching in 2016, the show was an immediate hit, shocking the world by daring to delve into the private lives of the British royals. It reimagined their darkest and finest hours, depicting scandals, affairs, political allegiances, feuds and friendships.
Spanning the decades between Queen Elizabeth's wedding in 1947 and 2005, the year Charles married Camilla, the series has seen some of the country's best actors including Helena Bonham Carter, Emma Corrin and Dominic West step up to play our nobility.
But who played them best? Here we rank the actors who have had a go at the series' major roles.
Queen Elizabeth
Winner: Claire Foy
We probably shouldn’t even attempt to compare the work of such heavyweight actors as Foy, Colman and Staunton, who all played very different versions of the Queen. But if we had to pick, Foy is our number one.
Although she had already enjoyed a pretty successful TV career when she stepped into the Netflix role in 2016 (she had played Lady Persephone Towyn in Upstairs Downstairs and Anne Boleyn in Wolf Hall) Foy was still obscure enough to completely disappear into Elizabeth – with incredible results.
2. Olivia Colman
The news that Olivia Colman would play Elizabeth delighted some and confused others. While she was initially best-known for her comedic roles, especially as Sophie in Peep Show, her performance in the brutal Tyrannosaur in 2011 made her one of the most sought after dramatic actors, and she went on to win a string of awards including the Oscar for Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite.
Her transformation into the Queen brought more awards. And once we managed to shelve the images of her running around Hatfield House, screaming and squawking as Queen Anne, we were wholly transported behind Kensington Palace’s walls to Sixties Britain.
3. Imelda Staunton
When Imelda Staunton picks up the baton, the Queen is in her 60s and faces her “annus horribilis” after Prince Andrew separated from Fergie, Princess Anne divorced Mark Phillips and Diana and Charles separated all in 1992. It goes on to cover a moment of huge political change in Britain too, with Tony Blair becoming prime minister after 17 years of Conservative rule. She does a brilliant job, though it’s hard to ever forget you’re watching Imelda Staunton.
Prince Philip
Winner: Tobias Menzies
Not only did Menzies have more of Philip’s vulpine look, but he managed to capture the prince’s internal battle with his often hot emotions, with a tactful squint or furrowing of the brow. “The idea of this alpha male spending his life walking two or three steps behind his wife… to be in an almost entirely ceremonial position, it’s fascinating,” said Menzies to The Guardian in 2021. “It’s the stuff of Greek drama.”
2. Matt Smith
Smith charmed as the royal consort. This was partly due to the chemistry between him and Foy as the young royals, which won hearts the world over. But it was also because he managed to communicate all of Philip’s often visually inscrutable moods, from the vulnerable to the furious. He also introduced audiences to a sprightly, naughty, challenging Philip – the real Philip – the ex naval lieutenant and Greek prince, that was often forgotten about in the decades following his marriage to the Queen.
3. Jonathan Pryce
Predictably, Pryce comes in third. It’s not that he isn’t a brilliant actor; anyone who has seen Wolf Hall, Game of Thrones, The Two Popes, or any of his other 96 screen credits can vouch for that. It’s just that a) he doesn’t look anything like the prince b) season five put more focus on Diana and Charles than Elizabeth and Philip and c) he got the less fun Philip. Go figure.
Princess Margaret
Winner: Vanessa Kirby
We adored Kirby’s take on the younger Princess Margaret: Queen Elizabeth’s chain smoking, hopeless romantic younger sister who spent the last decade of her life in and out of hospital as a result of her constant smoking. In the earlier seasons, Margaret was trying to find out who she really was, coming to terms with the constraints of her role.
The moment that seals Kirby’s standing as number one in this list is her portrayal of Margaret’s breakdown in series two, where she drinks away her sorrows after losing out on the chance to be with her first love, Captain Townsend, thanks to the rigid confines of “the firm”. Kirby expresses everything Foy’s character cannot, and represents a flash of modernity amidst a sea of old stiffs. It’s hard not to love her for it.
2. Helena Bonham Carter
Helena Bonham Carter is always brilliant in everything she does, particularly when she is playing someone tinged with a little madness. Margaret was not bonkers, nor strange – but she was apparently spirited, vivacious, snappy and bossy. Bonham Carter wasn’t our favourite Margaret, but she excelled at showing her as a complicated figure: a woman coming to terms with her duties as the second sister, while struggling with love and life. She and Colman also made a formidable onscreen pair.
3. Lesley Manville
When Manville took up the mantle, she read everything she could get her hands on to get a real flavour of the older Princess. Past her heyday, long divorced, supporting her sister and thinking about the country and its future, Manville’s Margaret was less gregarious and more thoughtful than she had been in previous years. Manville smashed depicting this less obviously captivating version of the Princess.
Princes Charles
Winner: Josh O’Connor
When Josh O’Connor was cast in Francis Lee’s lovely, small independent movie God’s Own Country in 2017, it was clear the young actor was a future star. And being cast as the younger Prince Charles in The Crown confirmed it. With his appropriately-sized ears (sorry), O’Connor aced the role, not only depicting Charles a thoughtful and even likeable figure, but by also making him, dare we say, attractive. A total heartthrob, even. Now that’s talent.
2. Dominic West
While West is an undoubted star, he perhaps brings too much baggage to play Prince Charles. It was difficult for us to shake off the memory of some of West’s other roles from The Wire’s Detective Jimmy McNulty to playing Noah Solloway in The Affair. He was so good – and his face is so memorable – that in many of his scenes in The Crown season five it felt like his old characters walked into the wrong film, finding themselves dressed in suits, riding limos and running around Highgrove. “Dominic West is far too hot to play Prince Charles,” said Vogue in November 2022. West told Netflix’s Tudum that he spent a year umming and ahhing over the role, wrestling with an “overwhelming feeling” he’d been miscast…
Princess Anne
Winner: Erin Doherty
Princess Anne is the coolest royal by miles, both IRL and in The Crown. Who isn’t obsessed with the real Anne’s addiction to wearing sport performance sunglasses with her finest dresses and hats, the fact she’s a three-time Olympic medal winner and her iconic response to a 1974 attempted kidnap: “Not bloody likely”?
Given that the Queen’s no-nonsense only daughter is known just as much for protecting her private life as she is for her dry sense of humour, Erin Doherty had a challenge on her hands trying to get to the bottom of the enigmatic royal. But she more than succeeded, with her version of Anne frequently stealing scenes in the show, as well as picking up a horde of fans.
2. Claudia Harrison
Claudia Harrison had big boots to fill, then, but she did a fantastic job of evolving the role, capturing Princess Anne’s sophistication – well masked by the stiff coiffed bonnet – and steeliness as the royal family went through some of its rockiest years and as her marriage to Mark Phillips disintegrated.
Prince Edward VIII, Duke of Windsor
Winner: Alex Jennings
The Crown didn’t half take Edward VIII to task. With storylines looking into the allegations of him as a Nazi sympathiser, as well an unscrupulous leader who abandoned his responsibilities – abdicating from the throne and marrying Wallis Simpson – and a leech, perpetually demanding money from his niece, the Queen. Jennings was an excellent choice for this kind of depiction of the once king: while almost oozing oil, he hit the tone of the cool Edward perfectly – even as the character changed over time.
2. Derek Jacobi
As with West playing Charles, Jacobi was, and is, frankly too famous to play Prince Edward. We kept on catching ourselves going, ‘Oh there’s Derek Jacobi in Kensington Palace’. Weird.
Camilla Parker Bowles
Winner: Olivia Williams
Being compared to Princess Diana is a losing game, and no one knows this better than Camilla Parker Bowles. The aristocrat, whose affair with Prince Charles started in 1986, has been historically characterised as both dowdy and villainous. Williams succeeded in conveying some of Camilla’s humour and warmth.
2. Emerald Fennell
Fennell’s Camilla wig was limp and heavy, and while this was by no means Fennell’s fault, it came to symbolise our feelings about her take on the Queen consort. She is a far better director and writer than she is a Queen Camilla imitator, which can only be a good thing.
Princess Diana
We can’t – and won’t – pick between Emma Corrin and Elizabeth Debicki's renditions of Diana. Both actors did an incredible job of embodying two versions of the princess so different they could almost be different people: Despite bearing only a little resemblance, Corrin perfectly captured Diana’s youth and fragility at the beginning of her relationship with Charles – Diana was just 16 years old when she met the future king, and 20 when they became engaged.
Willowy and elegant Debicki is Diana transformed: by her 30s, the princess had been put through the ringer by the press, had travelled the world, had affairs, gone through a very public and humiliating separation from Charles, and had raised two young children. And Debicki carries it all off with extraordinary aplomb.
