REGIONAL CASE STUDY
LONDON
For the team behind prestigious Netflix series The Crown, shooting in the UK was the first
and only choice — and the capital proved a welcoming location.
Wendy Mitchell
reports.
A CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT
Matt Smith as Philip and
Claire Foy as Elizabeth
in The Crown
L
eft Bank Pictures and Sony Pictures Tele-
vision production
The Crown
— commis-
sioned by Netflix — tells the story of
Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, beginning with her
coronation in 1952 and taking in her dealings
with various prime ministers across the decades.
Executive Producer Andy Harries of Left
Bank has previously shot films and TV shows
in places such as Budapest and Prague but
says, “With a show like
The Crown
, it’s about
Britain and it needed to be shot in Britain. It
was never really considered to shoot abroad.”
Locations Manager Pat Karam adds: “It
would be perverse to go outside to replicate
such quintessentially English locations and
the environment here is so film friendly.”
The Crown
is the brainchild of writer Peter
Morgan (
The Deal
,
The Queen
), with Stephen
Daldry directing the first two of the initial
10-episode run and Claire Foy starring as the
young monarch.
Not being able to film in historical locations
such as Buckingham Palace, Westminster
Abbey or 10 Downing Street did not faze
Karam. To recreate Buckingham Palace, he and
the team used several locations led by Lon-
don’s Lancaster House, which is managed by
the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. “It is a
wonderful building that has the scale and
grandeur of Buckingham Palace,” says Harries.
Karam adds: “There are various consider-
ations with these grand period stately homes,
but we had an excellent relationship with them.”
Other locations used to double for Bucking-
ham Palace include Wilton House near Salis-
bury, Greenwich Naval College and Wrotham
Park in Hertfordshire. Some sets for private
quarters of the royal residences were built at
Elstree Studios, just 20 minutes from the heart
of London in Borehamwood. The exterior of 10
Downing Street was built there on the backlot,
as was a set of the Cabinet room.
Grand standing
For Westminster Abbey, Ely Cathedral in Cam-
bridgeshire was used, including for pivotal
scenes of Elizabeth II’s coronation as well as
her wedding to Philip Mountbatten. The pro-
duction also shot briefly in Scotland, to capture
the feel of Balmoral, while Englefield House in
Berkshire doubled for Sandringham. Harries
estimates that the first series shot about 75%
on location and 25% in the studio.
Karam has a long history of working with
bodies such as Film London and Creative Eng-
land to advise and help on locations, and he
notes that Westminster Council and the Royal
Parks were especially helpful on
The Crown
because of the show’s many central London
locations.
“London is a particularly film-friendly city,”
says Karam, who has been filming in the capital
since the late 1990s and is finding the process
ever more straightforward.“People have realised
the importance of the film industry. Location
managers have very good working relationships
with the London boroughs.”
Harries also adds that the key creative deci-
sion to shoot in the UK was made feasible by
the UK high-end TV tax credit. “It stimulates
and helps our business hugely,” he says.
The Crown
is Netflix’s most expensive drama
commission and the second series, which
moves the action into the 1960s, is greenlit to
start shooting in September. As Harries says,
“It’s a flagship show not just for us but for UK
film and television.”
UK
The Crown will be available on Netflix
from 4 November, 2016
“
THE CROWN
NEEDED TO BE
SHOT IN BRITAIN. IT
WAS NEVER REALLY
CONSIDERED TO
SHOOT ABROAD
”
Andy Harries, Left Bank Pictures
16
