How The Crown’s Finale Returned to the Very Beginning—in More Ways Than One

Over six seasons, The Crown covered extraordinary ground in its portrait of the British royal family, specifically showing us nearly six decades in the life of Queen Elizabeth II. But the show created by Peter Morgan also started just as it ended—inside a grand chapel, focused on a pivotal moment in the queen’s life, with Stephen Daldry directing beside his trusty cinematographer, Adriano Goldman.

Nominated for 18 Emmys, including for Daldry’s and Goldman’s contributions to the series finale, “Sleep, Dearie Sleep,” The Crown’s final season builds to the queen’s 80th birthday in 2006, and a poignant, imagined moment of reflection inside St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. The queen (Imelda Staunton) encounters her previous, younger selves (in the form of Claire Foy, who played the character in seasons one and two, and Olivia Colman, who portrayed her in seasons three and four) and considers her own mortality. The last shot is of Elizabeth II simply walking—a lonely, quiet, deeply moving goodbye, suffused with bright light and immaculately designed.

The contrast to the show’s post–WW II beginnings, set in a very different England as a wide-eyed young Elizabeth is thrust into power when her father, King George VI (Jared Harris), falls ill, couldn’t be starker. Yet in Daldry’s and Goldman’s hands, the visual journey makes perfect sense. Below, the director and cinematographer reflect on key images from The Crown’s first and final episodes, from the difficulty of capturing particular shots to how they holistically represent their epic 60-episode effort.

Beginnings, in Postwar London

Adriano Goldman: We’re right after the Second World War, so London was in bad shape. Really gray and rundown—including the royal palaces. Stephen felt that should be somehow felt. Instead of discussing references, I remember us discussing what I call anti-references, stuff that we didn’t want. I remember us saying, “This shouldn’t be glossy. It shouldn’t be Cinderella-like in any way.” Although we are talking about a specific family that, from the public’s perspective, lives this fairy-tale life, it was much rougher than we thought. We always wanted this believable, breathable kind of texture where costumes can be seen, that you can somehow feel the air, feel the dust, and be physically close to the actors.

That was very much Stephen in terms of how to be different from so many other royal dramas and series and movies that had been done before in the UK and all over the world. There was this kind of, I’m going to say, enhanced realism. We should be able to trust the characters, trust the locations, trust the costumes. Nothing should be absolutely new.

Stephen Daldry: Adriano is probably the world’s leading cinematographer when it comes to an emotional engagement with a close-up, and allowing it never to feel like it’s lit, but it’s actually always keeping it as following the character. Rather than feeling that he’s lighting a scene, he’s always lighting the characters, and it’s always incredibly specific.

This scene actually wasn’t written. This is one of our made-up scenes, Adriano. [Laughs] We thought we might take the king on a duck shoot, and he would cough and we would feel an impending mortality. We went to the location and we decided we’d try to do the hardest thing, which is put these characters on boats in these incredibly difficult shooting conditions. We had to be on the boat next to them, and, of course, this is very difficult—to get this early-morning mist so perfectly, and follow these characters into what is a sequence, which is actually about the king’s death.

We had loads of ducks, and Adriano was behind the camera at one point, and he was saying, “I don’t see any ducks. I’m not seeing any.” So I went myself down in front of Adriano with a load of ducks, holding the ducks myself and throwing the ducks myself into the air. So it felt like the ducks were passing, but that was just Adriano—me throwing the ducks, and these boats going off into the mist.

Establishing the Palette

Goldman: This is classic Stephen. Even myself, I was like, “What do you mean? Is there a surgery option inside the palace? This doesn’t look like a hospital room!” He asked, “Does it look beautiful? Do you think we can deliver scale and emotion?” And then I embraced it. It’s so beautiful. It’s so believable.

Daldry: This was a huge effort, this shot [from the first episode]. The camera’s up there, and then you’ve got one light in the middle taking [the king’s] lung out—the use of the different light from an appalling operation happening down there to the glitter of these chandeliers hanging above. We built this stage. It’s obviously got no connection with reality at all, but it had an emotional reality about an operation in the palace.

Goldman: The warm chandeliers and the blue light coming from the window—that’s also one of The Crown’s visual marks in a way. Especially yellows and blues, oranges and blues—even when you see Prince Philip [played by Matt Smith] celebrating on the boat, the image that you have just underneath that’s like a kind of cyan sky with a very orange, sunny sunset sort of look.

This color contrast is something that we kind of pursued throughout six seasons. Not too many colors, but there’s always a little bit of that, the muted blues and the muted yellows and browns. And I think that it’s a constant thing throughout.

Daldry: Even if we change actors and directors season to season, there’s a feeling of consistency—the aesthetic unity right through all those hours—because of Adriano. This one of Philip had Adriano waiting. We sat there and waited for Adriano to go, “Okay, now shoot.” He’d go, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,” until that color coordination is correct with the sun. There’s a meticulous nature to it, there’s a consistency to it, and there’s a huge emotional value to it.

From the Very First Day…

Daldry: This was shot actually at Ely Cathedral; we started shooting at this cathedral for Westminster Abbey. We changed it consistently, but this one was Ely Cathedral. And again, just look at every light contrast in there, from the candles to the altar to the couple. That’s the king taking his daughter to be married. These incredibly bright shafts of light that are coming in. The compositional parity of this is a classic Adriano.

Goldman: Stephen, do you remember how emotional you got that day? How much you cried?

Daldry: It was our first day of shooting, ever. Again, the three lines of the script said, “And they get married.” And they get married. So it was, again, Adriano and I going, “Okay, we’re going to get married. We’ve got to do the procession, we’ve got to do this.” And then we mapped it out together with the first AD, the whole process of what that actually meant. The whole day was predicated on one recording of the event where it seemed that she had a vocal wobble. The queen, Princess Elizabeth at this point, had a wobble in her voice, and the whole day was built on this one piece of research: that the queen seemed to delay. She paused and her voice broke when she was doing her vows. The whole day was based on this break.

My kids were there. It was the first day of shooting. Adriano came over from Brazil to do it. I don’t know. It was an insanely big day to start with. And however much we rehearsed, it was the first day with our two leads, Philip and Elizabeth, and they played it so delicately and so beautifully. We went, “Oh, okay, all right, okay. We might be okay. This is working. This is going to be special.” It was a day of discovery. It’s a big wedding scene. You’ve got some of the greatest actors in the English theatrical profession in the room at the same time. You’ve got thousands of extras. It is a big, expensive day to start with, which was the point. Start big and hard and go in, and we will sink or swim on that day. It was a day that I’ll never forget.

…to the Very Last Day

Daldry: And this is the last shot we did of the whole show—60 hours of television, and it was literally the last shot of the last day. We’d actually got to a point where we actually were running out of time. Adriano had planned this so that the beams of light hit like this. We literally had maybe eight minutes left of the day. There was one take, and there was one take for Imelda to do this. He said, “We’ve got to go on the last shot. We’ve got to shoot it now, because you’re going to run out of time.” So we went upstairs and we just said, “Okay, walk, Imelda.” Imelda didn’t know what she was going to do, so I just said, “Walk toward the door.”

Imelda just walked and walked toward the door, and time was really running out. And the first AD was with me. She gets to the doors, and Imelda didn’t know what to do when she got to the door. I didn’t have time to tell her what to do. The first AD had someone standing by; I said, “Have you got someone there? Can we open the doors?” He went, “Yeah.” And then there’s this miraculous light that comes in. Adriano had set the whole thing up, but actually it was one take. Another hugely emotional day. We all burst into copious amounts of tears on what an incredible journey that show’s been.

Goldman: And we had the other two queens watching.

Daldry: Everyone was there. One of the greatest and most emotional days of my life, I must say.

The Three Queens

Daldry: I was very keen to try to bring the three queens together. We actually had the luxury of rehearsing—in deep rehearsal—and that’s hard with those three women, getting them together in the same place. With Olivia and Imelda, we rehearsed actually in stables to try to work out the stable sequence, and we rehearsed on location some weeks before we shot with Imelda and obviously with Claire. That’s where we worked out quite a lot of the complications of how to make these relationships between the three women pan out, both in terms of narrative and in terms of a complicated shot list.

Goldman: There was a moment during prep that we were not absolutely certain that we would be able actually to have the three actresses. You see the queen dealing with the projector just underneath, and Stephen was planning and kind of trying to develop a sequence where, if we didn’t have the two other actresses, the image that Imelda sees projected on the screen would then embrace her, and she would be able to, let’s say, travel back in time and revisit some scenes that we shot throughout six seasons. But then when we got the confirmation that Olivia and Claire were not only interested but committed, Stephen and Peter went back to the script.

We shaped the scenes; Stephen with his usual approach in terms of always trying to create some complex choreography. If you go back to those scenes, you’ll realize they never face each other because it’s not that Imelda is actually talking to a ghost, she’s talking to herself. It’s like this inner voice. It’s something that she’s hearing, but she doesn’t necessarily want to face. Claire is always kind of over her shoulder, whispering this kind of conflict: “How far should we go? How long should we go? And is there a moment where we resign? Is there actually an end for our reign and our journey as queen?” This is all almost like working inside Imelda’s head. It was fascinating to watch not only Stephen coming with that plan, but seeing the actresses rehearsing together and how much they loved each other.

Daldry: The actors had to move between light and dark and light and shade until you’ve got basically a close-up here with Imelda. It’s a complicated close-up, because you’ve got a close-up that’s externally lit, so the light for the face is outside—there’s nothing in the room. You can still not only see incredible contrast, but the brightness in Imelda’s right eye. It’s a very, very specific light that has to be found very specifically on the right line.

There’s no point fudging it or asking Adriano just to light any old thing. You’ve got to find the right light because he’s so specific. And actually, if you look at the incredibly very different light that Claire’s in, it’s a much softer light. This whispering figure that’s behind her. Finding that step by step as they went through the scene was a joy.

Goldman: Imelda’s a theater actress, but somehow they all understand the complexity. They understand the rigid camera marks, and they embrace the technicalities and the choreography. It’s funny how, instead of saying, “This is compromising, this is boxing us too much,” they just embrace the cinema. I could expect that eventually they could say, “Oh, guys, let us just act.” This was all done on Steadicam. The camera is moving, and they’re moving. Finding this moment was really a beautiful thing to watch.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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