The Crown season five: stage stars set to appear in the Netflix series

The Crown has always had a tendency to cast British stage stars as part of its ongoing Netflix series. It seems apt – the show is based on Peter Morgan's hit play The Audience – which traced the life of the Queen through her plethora of Prime Ministers.

With season four going down a storm and season five in the works (and a season six also reportedly in the pipeline) we look at some of the stage stars who are set to take part next time around. Due to the pandemic, it is reported that the series will likely not be released until 2022.

Imelda Staunton – The Queen

Staunton is already stage royalty, so it seems fairly apt that she's given the same attention on Netflix. Though plans for her appearance in Hello, Dolly! in the West End was sadly disrupted by the pandemic (hopefully one day it will return), Staunton has appeared in the likes of Follies, Gypsy, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Gypsy and Sweeney Todd. She recently admitted that she found taking on the role of Elizabeth II (the third performer to do so after Claire Foy and Olivia Colman) relatively daunting – this Queen is set in a much more contemporary time period and thus open to more scrutiny than the Queen Elizabeths of series past.

Jonathan Pryce – Prince Phillip

Another theatre legend, Pryce was most recently on stage in The Height of the Storm, Florian Zeller's highly-commended drama at the Wyndham's Theatre. The piece then hopped across the Atlantic to Broadway. He has won a variety of awards over an epic career, so will make the perfect Phillip come 2022!

Lesley Manville – Princess Margaret

Manville will take over from the inimitable Helena Bonham-Carter as the Queen's sister Margaret when the show returns. She was actually at the National Theatre when the pandemic first broke out, performing alongside Hugo Weaving in The Visit or The Old Lady Comes to Call. She'll now take on the role of Margaret during the Royal Family member's final years.

Elizabeth Debicki – Princess Diana

Australian-French actress Debicki was most recently on screens in Chris Nolan's mindbending film Tenent, but she's also had a series of high profile theatrical appearances – in the likes of the National's The Red Barn and Jean Genet's The Maids Off-Broadway alongside Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert. Debicki will play Diana during some of the most important events of her (and the Royal Family's) history – surely one of the trickiest roles in television history. Emma Corrin, who took on the role in season four, will reportedly also make some sort of appearance during the series.

Dominic West – Prince Charles

Though not completely set in stone (reports have been quiet since October) West will be the successor to another stage hit Josh O'Connor (O'Connor was originally meant to have starred in Romeo and Juliet at the National last summer, but that show has transformed into a screen experience) in taking on the role of the Prince of Wales. He was last on stage in the Donmar's revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses alongside Janet McTeer, while previous roles include Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield and a leading role in Jez Butterworth's The River.

Further casting is to be revealed – we're sure that there will be more stage stars to come.

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