‘The Crown’ actors Imelda Staunton, Jonathan Pryce and Lesley Manville on filming amid news of the queen’s death

Heavy is the head that stars in “The Crown.”

Actor Imelda Staunton admits she found the first few months of portraying Queen Elizabeth II in the popular Netflix drama “fairly terrifying.”

Asked in a video interview when she finally settled into the role, Staunton replied, “It was almost down to the last couple of days, I have to say, of finishing” shooting Season 5, which debuts Wednesday. “I couldn’t relax and I couldn’t think, ‘Oh yes, I can do this’ because it’s too sort of precious, if you like. I wanted each scene to be as good, if not better, than the last.”

“I think Imelda had the hardest job and continues to have the hardest job of all of us,” added Jonathan Pryce, who plays her consort, Prince Philip, in the series that dramatizes the lives of the Royal Family. “Because everyone has that image of the queen, how she sounds, how she walks, how she looks.”

That is undoubtedly even truer since the death of the real Elizabeth in September at the age of 96, when the world was flooded with images and footage of the queen, the longest serving British monarch at 70 years on the throne.

That death, by the way, hit Staunton harder than she expected.

“We were filming (Season 6) in the afternoon and we got news that all the family were travelling up to Balmoral,” where the queen died.

“My reaction surprised me. I was fairly inconsolable that night, I have to say,” Staunton said.

They didn’t get back to work until the day after Elizabeth’s funeral “and there was a huge sense of sadness,” she added, especially for members of the crew who had worked on “The Crown” since Day 1.

But, in the land of “keep calm and carry on,” as it were, “we are carrying on doing the job.”

That job has been immensely rewarding as well as challenging, said Staunton, Pryce and Lesley Manville, who plays Princess Margaret.

You couldn’t ask for a better trio, in a show that has already boasted stellar casting, to help usher out the series, which will end with its sixth season sometime in 2023. All three are Oscar nominees and highly respected British actors with long and varied lists of credits.

Pryce called Philip the second best prince he has played after Hamlet and said he was very happy to get the part, seeing as “eligible roles for 75-year-old men were slowly diminishing down to there was one person left I could play.”

In a separate interview, Manville, 66, said she felt “mostly joy” at knowing she was going to play Margaret, sister of the queen, who died in 2002 at the age of 71.

“I’d have to sort of pinch myself for quite a while before it kind of really sunk in. But then, you know, the work begins and you’ve got to actually knuckle down and get it together, and research the woman and read about her, and watch the footage and listen to her.”

Staunton is playing a 1990s version of the queen more familiar to viewers than the 20- and 30-something played by Claire Foy in seasons 1 and 2, or the queen Olivia Colman portrayed in her 40s, 50s and early 60s in seasons 3 and 4. Manville, on the other hand, is portraying a Margaret who’s more of an unknown.

“She was still doing her public duties but, socially, her life was a little quieter. She wasn’t in the press all the time anymore,” Manville said.

The Margaret of Season 5, in her view, devotes herself to supporting her sister in a turbulent decade that saw the divorces of three of Elizabeth’s children — after a damaging public relations war in the case of Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales, which is portrayed onscreen — a destructive fire at Windsor Castle, Diana’s death and public criticism of the monarchy.

Margaret herself is “in many ways coming to terms with … the loneliness of the life that she’s left with now, at a time when you probably don’t want to be lonely,” Manville added.

“And what the scripts do really very beautifully, particularly Episode 4, which is an episode that features Margaret’s story quite heavily, is that it allows you to see the pain and the loneliness behind what you imagine being this exuberant, slightly larger-than-life woman that you knew was a great party girl.”

“Imagine” is a key word here.

It was not lost on any of the actors that they’re playing imagined versions of real people — despite recent criticisms of “The Crown” for, in the words of fellow actor Judi Dench, blurring “the lines between historical accuracy and crude sensationalism.”

None of the three addressed those criticisms directly, nor were they asked to — Pryce has already called them “very disappointing” — but Staunton praised series creator Peter Morgan for writing “a rather wonderful imagination … of what might have happened. It was great to be able to investigate what might have been.”

Manville echoed that. “We all know the events. We all know what the documentaries say … What we don’t know is what they talked about over breakfast, what it was like for Margaret to wake up alone and be lonely, what it was like to have an argument with another member of the Royal (Family). And that’s what ‘The Crown’ can do under the umbrella of being a drama.”

Both Staunton and Pryce felt they learned things about the queen and Prince Philip, who predeceased Elizabeth in 2021 at the age of 99.

“I didn’t know how important Elizabeth’s faith was to her,” Staunton said. “And that allowed me to access (in her) a sense of duty and responsibility and ability to be, I think, a very sort of kind and a good person … I think the reaction to her death, people queuing for hours and hours, I think they just respected this person who kept their promise. So it’s rather nice, you know, trying to be that person.”

Pryce said he knew very little about Philip beyond the general impression of him “being irascible, grumpy, saying all the wrong things or just (being) three feet behind the queen.”

“It was great to discover what a man of great intellect he was. He was interested in science and the natural world (and) was a great leader of men. And so it really altered my perception of him. And I welcomed the chance to bring that person to life, not necessarily the person that we all thought we knew.”

All three actors have met members of the Royal Family on being inducted into the Order of the British Empire. Manville recalled the queen coming to her school in the 1960s and King Charles III attending one of her plays when he was still a prince.

She even had a near miss with Margaret on the island of Mustique in the 1980s.

“I did apparently miss meeting her by a night,” Manville said. “I had to fly home back to England. And there was a party that I was invited to where apparently she was playing the drums.”

Mustique, a private island that caters to the rich and famous, was something of a refuge for Margaret, as portrayed on “The Crown,” and Manville understands that craving for privacy.

“I can completely understand why (the royals) want to get away to Scotland and not have cameras waiting outside for them,” she said. “I mean, some of my life is lived in a public way, but nothing like the extent to which theirs was.

“They’re people at the end of the day. I think ‘The Crown’ really humanizes them … They’ve been through heartache, pain, grief, loneliness, joy, everything in between. Because what human beings don’t? And just because they’re aristocrats, they’re royalty, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have all of those feelings. I know that’s an obvious, obvious, obvious thing to say, but it’s important nevertheless.”

Debra Yeo is a deputy editor and a contributor to the Star’s Entertainment section. She is based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @realityeo

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