The Crown to pause filming due to the Queen’s death

As a result of the death of Queen Elizabeth II, filming is to halt on the new series of the Netflix drama The Crown. Peter Morgan’s award-winning series, which dramatises the lives of the British monarchy, was in the process of shooting its fifth season when the Queen’s death was announced.

“The Crown is a love letter to her and I’ve nothing to add for now, just silence and respect. I expect we will stop filming out of respect too,” he told news site Deadline. (This was then confirmed by a source at Netflix.) It follows a 2016 comment by one of the drama’s producers, Stephen Daldry, about the show having plans in place in the event of the monarch’s death.

“None of us know when that time will come but it would be right and proper to show respect to the Queen,” said Daldry. “It would be a simple tribute and a mark of respect. She’s a global figure and it’s what we should do.”

Season five of The Crown will depict the early to mid 1990s, and features an entirely new cast, including Imelda Staunton as the Queen, Dominic West as Prince Charles and Elizabeth Debicki as Diana, Princess of Wales. It marks the second change of cast to the show, whose first two series saw Claire Foy playing a youthful version of the monarch, before being recast as Olivia Colman for seasons three and four.

The fifth series had been billed as the last of this critically acclaimed show, despite Morgan having initially conceived it as a six-series show. At the time, he said of the decision to call time on the programme – which has been watched by more than 73m households worldwide: “At the outset, I had imagined The Crown running for six seasons, but now that we have begun work on the stories for season five it has become clear to me that this is the perfect time and place to stop. I’m grateful to Netflix and Sony for supporting me in this decision.”