One of the main questions that always seems to crop up surrounding The Crown is whether or not members of the royal family who have been portrayed on the drama are actually binge-watching the excellent Netflix series. Star Jonathan Pryce, who stars as Prince Phillip, recently said that rumors the members of family have a Netflix subscription and watch the series he’s heard are true (at least to an extent). He even explained a moment he had with Princess Anne that “amused” him.
Of course, even Pryce said the moment with Princess Anne wasn’t straightforward. He recounted the story in an interview with Times Radio on Christmas Eve (via the Independent), noting the The Crown cast has heard certain members of the famous family have been watching, and that a communication with Princess Anne about the possibility was intriguing.
One of our cast met one of the royal family who intimated that they watched it. When I was made a knight and went to Windsor, and it was Princess Anne who dubbed me, and I was in the middle of playing her father, and there’d been intimations that she’d seen some of it. And so she put the sword lightly on the shoulder, and I stood up and I said – thinking she was thinking, you know – I said, ‘Oh, I don’t know what to say to you…um…sorry? And she said, ‘Why? It’s done now.’
Pryce said that while Princess Anne didn’t straight up admit to watching the series, he’s heard others have. But he couldn’t be sure about the princess as the two flubbed their way through the moment, though the actor indeed found the whole thing pretty “amusing” in the end.
Now, whether she meant I was saying sorry for being here tonight, or sorry for, y’know, you’ve played my father and it’s done the way you’ve done it, it’s, you know, whatever. It was quite an amusing moment, for me at least.
An insider previously said that Queen Camilla Bowles was watching and that KingCharles had reportedly binged The Crown for a while; he reportedly stopped watching it after Season 4 when the timeline got closer to the present day. An even juicier rumor about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle indicated they wanted the show to stop before it got to their romantic storyline.
Of course all of this is secondhand information, but you’d have to think that at least some people in the family have at least seen clips even if they haven’t binged the series. It’s such a prominent streaming show with such a relevant cultural impact, I’d be more shocked to learn royal family members had all missed the show than shocked to learn some had watched it.
As for Jonathan Pryce, he, Matt Smith and Tobias Menzies have portrayed Prince Phillip during the course of the show. The actors paid tribute after Prince Phillip’s death at 99.
Jonathan Pryce has previously said he joined the series because playing Prince Phillip was “so far removed” from his own growing up experience in Wales, but he also told Netflix interviewers that people should never “forget that it’s not a documentary.” The Crown recently aired the second part of its final season on Netflix, but it’s impact should last far longer than the six seasons it ran.