From the moment Netflix announced plans for The Crown, we knew it was going to be a wildly ambitious drama series.
But it’s only now that the Netflix original is changing things up for season 3 that The Crown‘s scale and scope are being put into perspective.
At the center of that impending transition is former Doctor Who star Matt Smith, who is expected to vacate the role of Prince Phillip for Tobias Menzies. The latter is just one of many newcomers to Netflix’s plush regal drama – ditto for Olivia Colman and Helena Bonham Carter – and during his appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden, Smith recalled the advice he gave to Menzies about entering the Royal Family
We spoke, actually, before it. I do know him because I have done a play with him – a play that you did *points at James Corden* called the History Boys. I told him ‘don’t do it’ [laughs]. No, I said a few things to him. I told him a good book to read by Philip Eade called ‘The Young Prince’, which is very good. You know what it’s like, you can’t offer up too much. Just make sure they pay you enough… make sure it’s even.
Smith then caps things off by referring to The Crown pay dispute, after it was revealed that he earned significantly more than his co-star at the time, Claire Foy.
Story-wise, we know The Crown season 3 is bracing for a whole new era of royal drama, as we follow the journey of Queen Elizabeth and her sister Princess Margaret through Buckingham Palace and beyond. Leaked set photos have indicated that the show plans to whisk viewers off to 1960s Washington D.C., presumably to retell the meeting between Elizabeth and Richard Nixon.
But make no mistake, the switch between one generation and the next has left series producer Suzanne Mackie with a heavy heart, as she recently told THR:
It was very sad to say goodbye to the season one and two cast; they were brilliant and we’d all become friends. But I don’t think any other show has recast its characters between seasons, so there is something both nerve-wracking and exhilarating too.
Season 3 of The Crown is expected to grace Netflix in 2019.