🚨Obviously spoilers ahead for The Crown Season 4!🚨
2. Season 4 was filmed out of order, so there was a point when the cast was filming Episodes 9 and 10 and Episode 3 at the same time — Emma Corrin said it was wild having to play Diana when she was 19 and 28 at the same time.
3. The cast from Season 4 has a massive WhatsApp group text and they text each other all the time — Josh O'Connor and Emma said they also send "voice notes" and it's fun listening to Olivia Colman and Gillian Anderson get excited when they successfully send one.
4. At the first table read for Season 4, Gillian was actually listening to Margaret Thatcher speaking in her headphones so she could get the accent down.
5. In fact, no one, except for The Crown's vocal coach, had heard Gillian's Margaret Thatcher voice until the second day of rehearsals — Gillian said she was "quite shy" to unveil it for the first time.
6. Olivia said it was "very difficult to keep a straight face" while acting opposite Gillian as Margaret Thatcher — Olivia couldn't stop laughing over Gillian's Thatcher voice during their scenes together.
7. When The Crown was casting the role of Camilla Parker Bowles, they actually hired Emma to come in and just read for Diana off camera.
8. The word Emma used to "get into" Diana's accent was "alright," and she would say it over and over again in order to practice the inflection of Diana's voice.
9. Emma went through a six-month training period where The Crown's movement coach worked with her on some random things, like how Diana would stand in a doorway.
10. Gillian also worked with the movement coach before filming began and learned how to mimic Margaret Thatcher's unique walk.
11. Olivia said everyone was really "freaked out" when they saw Emma in her Diana wig for the first time because she looked so much like her.
12. And Emma explained that the Diana wig was originally just a very long wig that the hair department then had to cut and style to match Diana's hair.
13. Princess Diana's wedding dress took 14 weeks to make and included several "long" fittings for Emma. The dress is shown for less than a minute on screen.
14. Costume designer Amy Roberts got permission from Princess Diana's original wedding dress designers, David and Elizabeth Emanuel, to reproduce the dress.
15. In fact, David helped consult on fabric choices for the costume and even brought in copies of the original designs.
16. In the end, it took about 10 people to get Emma into Princess Diana's wedding dress for filming, and it was an extremely heavy costume.
17. Olivia and Emma both agree that Helena Bonham Carter was "the worst DJ" when they would play music in the makeup van together — Emma said it ranged from "obscure clarinet solos" to the Mulan soundtrack.
18. The cast stayed in cabins close together in Aviemore, Scotland while filming "The Balmoral Test" — Olivia hates being alone, so she actually roomed with Marion Bailey, who played the Queen Mother.
19. During the big family scenes, the cast would play "Fives" between takes and would play "for hours on end."
20. Also, sometimes during the big family scenes, the crew would simply let the cameras run and the cast would just have fun together while playing games and playing with the dogs.
21. While rehearsing the scene when Camilla and Diana go to lunch together, Benjamin Caron had Josh sit between Emerald Fennell and Emma so they could really play up the tension.
22. The Crown Season 4 had only six more days of filming when the coronavirus pandemic shut everything down — they had to still film the avalanche, so they ended up using actual news footage and showing Charles reflecting on the accident.
23. While filming, Emma notoriously got really giggly and started laughing after six o'clock and everyone would know it was the end of the day.
24. Originally, Gillian was going to wear prosthetic teeth to match Margaret Thatcher's, but they didn't look natural on camera, so Gillian learned how to hold her mouth so she had an overbite.
25. Gillian was most nervous to film the scenes in "48:1" when Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth II clash over apartheid — she said, "Those were the scenes I was most looking forward to and most dreading at the same time."
26. While the song was changed in the final version of the episode, Emma was actually dancing to Cher's "Do You Believe" — there was no choreography and she just came up with the moves in the moment.
27. In the episode "Terra Nullius" when Prince Charles and Princess Diana toured Australia in 1983, costume designer Amy Roberts created 17 Diana looks for just that one episode.
29. Emma was hospitalized after filming the moment when Princess Diana is playing in the pool with young William and Harry.
