Olivia Colman will take over the lead role in the third and fourth seasons of Netflix’s acclaimed series.
Olivia Colman is next in line to star as Queen Elizabeth in the Netflix series The Crown, Entertainment Weekly announces. Colman replaces Claire Foy in the role that won Foy a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress earlier this year.
Netflix has been very open about its plans to recast the roles in The Crown, so this news doesn’t come as an undesirable shock by any means. To the uninitiated, The Crown follows the life of Queen Elizabeth II from the 1970s to present day, charting her wedding and beyond. Those are a lot of years, and bar unfortunate ageing makeup, recasting the roles seems to be a more efficient, effective way to handle such big time jumps.
“The idea is to do this over six decades, in six seasons presumably, and make the whole show [run] over eight to 10 years,” said Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos last year. As a result, The Crown‘s cast turnover is expected to be swift, with new actors introduced every two seasons to fill primary roles.
Foy herself has been nothing but supportive of these executive decisions. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about her exit, Foy said, “I just think whoever they get to play that part, they’ll be extraordinary. I will never watch it with any sense of bitterness or regret. I will feel what I will feel now, which is so happy and lucky for the experience.”
Anyway, Colman’s screen credits make it exceptionally evident that she is right for such a major role. She led Broadchurch for three highly-acclaimed seasons. Colman also featured in The Night Manager and films like The Lobster and Hot Fuzz. She isn’t short of awards, having won a BAFTA for Best Actress for Broadchurch and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for The Night Manager, to name just a couple.
Foy already has some big projects lined up in her post-Crown acting life. She filmed a secret iPhone horror movie with Steven Soderbergh, titled Unsane, although it has no release date just yet. Foy will also be taking over the role of Lisbeth Salander in an adaptation of The Girl in the Spider’s Web, which is due out in October next year. The Girl in the Spider’s Web is set to begin shooting in January.
Season 2 of The Crown, starring Foy, is will air on Netflix on December 8th. Colman will next be seen in Murder on the Orient Express, which is out in theaters on November 10th.
Related Topics: Netflix, The Crown
