Return of the Princess – Style – Kommersant

The new season of The Crown introduces a new cast and tells about the events that took place in the British royal family in the 90s. “Kommersant Style” finds out the details of creating the images of the main characters of the drama.

The fifth season of the series The Crown takes us back to the era of the 1990s: through another change of actors, the creators of the show show the change of eras in the Windsor family, or in the System – as the royal people themselves call the British royal family. These are the years of the crisis of relations between Charles and Diana, when the novel of Charles and Camilla was publicly exposed, Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, Princess Anne and Mark Phillips divorced.

Princess Diana is played by Polish-Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki, Prince Charles is played by Briton Domik West, star of The Wire, who has already been called a too attractive version of the real prince (now the king). The role of Elizabeth II is played by Imelda Staunton, known for her roles in the Harry Potter films and the Downton Abbey series. Prince Philip became Jonathan Pryce, known for the series “Game of Thrones” and the movie “The Two Popes”. The new season will also feature Leslie Manville as Princess Margaret, Claudia Harrison as Princess Anne and Jonny Lee Miller as John Major, who was British Prime Minister from 1990 to 1997.

The creators of the show carried out a thorough reconstruction of not only the events of those years, but also the clothes and images of their main participants. Keith Hall, head of hair and makeup at The Crown, believes that when real people appear on the screen, the work of hairdressers and makeup artists becomes a priori more complicated. “It’s important that what we’re doing doesn’t look like a parody,” says Hall. The royal family is well “documented” – perhaps better than any other famous people in history – and this amount of visual information helped to shape the image of this or that character, whether it was the choice of outfit or hairstyle.

Princess Diana is the clear favorite of the season; we will see all her iconic looks, which have been repeated several times in glossy publications: a black tight-fitting mini dress, a Harvard sweatshirt and bike shorts, dresses of all kinds of prints, fashionable bags of famous brands. It is known that it was Diana who was the first among the “royalties” to turn to fashion and was not afraid of bright or provocative outfits; all the other members of the royal family have dressed and dress more than conservatively for years. Hall draws attention to other images, which, in her opinion, are worth paying attention to. “This season is like wig heaven,” she says, talking about Jonny Lee Miller as John Major; he’s turned into “a slightly nerdy middle-aged guy from the ’90s who wore the same haircut for years” – his white-haired wig perfectly visualizes this definition, as well as his invariable classic double-breasted suit. Camilla Parker Bowles, played by Olivia Williams, is also worthy of a mention – she is easily recognizable, her image definitely worked out.

Peter Morgan, the creator and writer of the show, originally planned to stop at the fifth season, but later confirmed that the sixth and final season would still be filmed. It will take the history of the Windsors to the beginning of the 2000s, where it seems there is no place for Meghan Markle – she joined the System much later, in 2018.

Irina Kirienko