Vanity Fair Reveals the Real-Life Counterparts of The Crown Season 6 Cast

Written by Julie Miller

The acclaimed TV series, The Crown, has already successfully brought to life five decades of British royal history, starting from the 1947 wedding of Queen Elizabeth to Prince Philip and concluding the fifth season with the well-documented divorce of Princess Diana and Prince Charles. The much-anticipated sixth and final season of The Crown, which is slated to premiere its first part on November 16 and second part on December 14, is set to potentially be the show's most contentious season yet. This is due to the retelling of events that many viewers will still have a clear recollection of. The last episodes are set from 1997 to 2000s and will feature significant events such as Diana’s death, Prince William’s college romance with Kate Middleton, and potentially another royal wedding. This article will provide a comparison of The Crown cast members with the actual royals they portray in the most current season of the show.

The tragic death of Diana figured prominently in the last episode of season five. In season six, Debicki will depict Diana’s final moments, inclusive of the chaotic chase by paparazzi that led to her mortal car crash. Debicki recently expressed her discomfort of filming the harrowing paparazzi chase scenes.

Prince Charles, despite his surprising breakdancing routine in the previous season, might be absent this time. West revealed that the final episodes will show “the worst period” of Charles’s life, mainly dealing with Diana’s death, the task of breaking the news to his children, and helping them grieve.

It seems that Charles might find happiness later in the series, with his 2005 wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles rumored to be depicted.

Claire Foy and Olivia Colman preceded Staunton, who is the third and final actor on the show to play the Queen. The sixth season will put some more pressure on the central character. In 2002, five years after her controversial public reaction to Diana’s death, the actual queen lost the two closest people in her life—her sister, Princess Margaret, and the Queen Mother.

Despite Prince Harry currently making the most headlines, Charles and Diana’s younger son may not be heavily featured in the final season. Show creator Peter Morgan advised of mainly including aspects about Harry that are related to William, which could be due to the fact that neither he nor Prince Andrew are direct successors to the throne.

The fourth season depicted the fraught early days of Prince Charles’s relationship with Diana, highlighting the demands on Charles to marry a suitable bride and the stress on Diana to acclimate to public life. It will be interesting to see how Morgan tells the story of Prince William and Kate Middleton’s initial days together at St. Andrews University, featuring McVey as the fourth-generation heir to the throne and Bellamy as his eventual wife.

Princess Anne was a serendipitous fan-favorite royal in season three. But considering the array of royal events to be portrayed, Anne may be a less central character this time, unless Morgan decides to explore Anne’s brush with the law in 2002 when she became the first royal family member with a criminal record.

Camilla Parker Bowles can anticipate better times in the upcoming season of The Crown, such as the “Arabian Nights” themed party thrown by Prince Charles for her in 1997. The debut of the new millennium saw a fresh phase for Parker Bowles, who made her first public appearance with Prince Charles in 1999 and married him in 2005.

Following Princess Diana’s death, Prince Philip assisted his grandsons, Prince William and Prince Harry, in mourning their mother. Philip, who convinced the boys to march behind their mother’s coffin in the unforgettable procession to Westminster Abbey, is set to feature in the series.

The once glamorous royal faces a sad final chapter in the drama’s last episodes, which will likely chronicle Margaret’s rapidly declining health. Manville, who also played Margaret in season five, told VF last year, “It must be very hard to have had that glamorous life and then to feel that it’s on the wane…. It’s very difficult for any woman to deal with. But I think when you’ve been in the spotlight as much as she was, that was an extra challenge.”

The Queen Mother bore witness to four generations of royals before dying in 2002 at the age of 101, making her the longest-living British royal at the time. On The Crown, the character has always been a welcome relief from all of that stuffiness and formality; she is one of the only characters comfortable snapping at the queen.

The Crown’s fifth season introduced Dodi Fayed, billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed’s playboy son who allegedly began dating Princess Diana at his father’s insistence. The sixth season will dramatize Dodi and Diana’s final hours together and their unlikely relationship.

The younger sister of Kate Middleton, Pippa will likely prove a sibling sounding board as Kate navigates new pressure as the woman dating the world’s most eligible bachelor.

Queen Elizabeth’s 10th prime minister is a familiar subject for Peter Morgan. The Crown’s creator previously dramatized Blair in the 2003 TV drama The Deal, the 2006 film The Queen, and the 2010 movie The Special Relationship. Morgan has gotten so good at scripting Blair’s conversations that, according to the Emmy-winning writer, the former PM even plagiarized his writing. (Blair insisted he’d never seen the film featuring the line in question.)