“The Crown will bow its final season in two parts. Netflix revealed the release plan in the first trailer, which shows Imelda Staunton’s Queen Elizabeth II walking past images of Claire Foy and Olivia Colman as a nod to the series’ decades-long journey.
The first four episodes of series 6 will debut on the streamer on 16 November. “The Crown” will then take a break for almost a month before the final six episodes are released on 14 December.
Although Netflix has largely stuck to its binge model of releasing all episodes of a TV season at once, it has previously split debuts; in 2022, “Stranger Things” Season 4 released seven episodes in May and held back the final two episodes until July.
Peter Morgan’s period drama series will cover the late 90s and early 2000s, a period marked by the tragic death of Princess Diana. Regarding Diana’s death, a source told Variety that the production team wanted to “get it right and handle it sensitively” for season 6. The series will also see the blossoming of Prince William and Kate Middleton’s romance while they were both students at the University of St Andrews.
The new series, which marks the final outing for The Crown, will star Staunton, Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana, Ed McVey as Prince William, Luther Ford as Prince Harry, Meg Bellamy as Kate Middleton, Jonathan Pryce as Prince Phillip, Dominic West as Prince Charles and Olivia Williams as Camilla Parker-Bowles.
Speaking about taking on the role of Princess Diana, Debicki told Variety’s Awards Circuit podcast that she hadn’t felt the weight of portraying the people’s princess before joining the project: “I never really understood what was lost because I hadn’t experienced the impact that she had on the public… She taught me a lot; I think she lived her life with an enormous amount of courage and with a strong love ethic. She really loved deeply and she needed to be loved in a way that I don’t know if she ever really found”.
