The concept of changing casts every two seasons is an interesting hook for The Crown, but it also means I’m going to spend the first episode adjusting. It’s also hard to judge how it’s all going to be from set stills, because they’re without context. I don’t know exactly how much older Tobias’s Philip is meant to be than Matt Smith’s was, for example. And while Menzies is listed as an inch taller than Smith, his Philip reads strangely shorter than Smith’s incarnation in this random shot, but probably won’t once everyone else is around him and we’re seeing him next to his Elizabeth (who is, as Olivia Colman, three inches taller than Claire Foy’s).
Anyway, all of that is to say: In a vacuum, these are so hard to analyze, but this does seem pretty promising. He has the chiseled, slightly hawkish feel of the actual Philip, and we know from Outlander that he can play haughty and casually cruel. I bring a fandom of Menzies into this that I didn’t have with Matt Smith, so it’ll be interesting for me to see how that affects things when I sit down to watch. In… however many months that is.
I missed some other casting bits and bobs in late July, as well:
I actually had seen the Ben Daniels one, but I couldn’t unpair it somehow with the Princess Anne announcement, so you get both. She seems like a great pick, as do these:
Marion in particular looks like REALLY good casting for the mother of Olivia Colman, and I also buy the two kids as having come from Colman and Menzies. I am READY.
