The Crown‘s sixth and final season brings with it “mixed emotions” for the current cast, who are tasked with bringing the beloved drama series to a close.
The Netflix show famously had new actors playing the royal characters every two seasons, which means there have been three actresses play Queen Elizabeth II as well as Prince Philip.
Sir Jonathan Pryce will be the last actor to play the late Duke of Edinburgh in the show and tells 9Honey Celebrity he has one regret of his portrayal of the monarch’s husband.
Watch the video above.
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“I don’t think I had enough gaffs as a character actually, I could have done with a few more one-liners to expose that side of him,” the 76-year-old tells 9Honey Celebrity.
Pryce admits he was, at first, skeptical about taking on the role but says he warmed to the idea as he learned about the late Queen’s consort by speaking to those who knew him best.
“My first feeling when I was offered the role was that I would be on a hiding to nothing, that I’m nothing like Prince Philip – I don’t look like him, I’m the wrong class, everything was wrong,” Pryce says.
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“It was interesting because I’d grown up with this very austere figure who rarely said anything and when he did say [something] it was usually putting his foot in his mouth and saying the wrong thing at the wrong time,” he continues.
“[But] everyone who knew him would say what a wonderful man he was, very gregarious and friendly, and who enjoyed having a laugh.
“So it was it was finding, like much of The Crown does, finding the person behind the closed doors and I enjoyed exploring that aspect of it.”
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The sixth and final season of the series focuses on the 1997 death of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed in a Paris car crash – something Pryce, who met Diana multiple times, remembers vividly.
“We’d just moved into a new house and we’d gone to bed happy, smiling, looking forward to this next phase of our lives, and woke up, put the radio on and for a while [was] completely confused as to what was happening,” he recalls.
“Information was coming out in dribs and drabs until finally it was confirmed that she’d died and for the first time ever in my life, I cried for a member of the royal family, as did my wife.”
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“It was a very emotional time because this is someone I’d met, I’d met her on a couple of occasions and she’d been part of our lives for years,” he says.
Pryce says he also vividly remembers the “angry response the public had to the lack of response from the royal family”, something Part Two of the final season explores.
The actor says he knows the topic of Diana and Dodi’s tragic death is a touchy one for fans but believes it’s “done with such sensitivity” and is “incredibly moving”.
While Pryce jokes he’ll now be signing up for unemployment benefits as the series ends, he is “glad we were going out still on this being a hugely successful series and we’re going out on a high definitely”.
Part One, featuring the first four episodes of Season 6 of The Crown, is streaming on Netflix from 7pm tonight.
While Part Two, including the last six episodes of the drama, is dropping on the streaming service on December 14.
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