The Crown: New Season 5 Photos Tease A Fractured Charles And Diana

The Crown is set to resume its reign on Netflix with a new cast — and an unmistakable tarnish on that crown.

The streamer has released a fresh batch of first-look photos from the upcoming Season 5, debuting Wednesday, Nov. 9 and featuring Imelda Staunton taking over the lead role as Queen Elizabeth II. Jonathan Pryce steps in as Elizabeth's husband Prince Philip, with Dominic West as her eldest son Charles and Elizabeth Debicki as Charles' wife Diana.

All is not well at Buckingham Palace, though: Season 5 delves deep into the marital rift between Charles and Diana, leading up to their announced separation in 1992. As we see in the above photo of Debicki as Diana, the toll of the media scrutiny is weighing heavily on her this season. Things are not any easier for Elizabeth, per the official synopsis: "With the new decade in its stride, the Royal Family are presented with possibly their biggest challenge to date, as the public openly question their role in '90s Britain."

The new cast also includes Lesley Manville as Princess Margaret, Olivia Williams as Camilla Parker-Bowles and Jonny Lee Miller as UK Prime Minister John Major. Read on to see more first-look photos from Season 5 and hear from the actors about inhabiting these very prominent roles. 

Staunton is excited — and nervous — about taking over the role of Elizabeth, she tells Netflix's Tudum: "What has been nice, and I hope I don't prove them wrong, is people saying, 'I'm really looking forward to seeing her as the queen. So let's just hope that works out for them because I've done it. Nothing I can do about it now!" (Both of her predecessors, Claire Foy and Olivia Colman, won Emmys for the role.)

Pryce adds that "doing this and looking into Philip's background and finding out what made him the man he was, that was the interest to me. I'm more interested in their life, their emotional life, which is what The Crown explores."

"I think people understand, because the cast has changed every two seasons, that this is not an imitation," West says of playing Prince Charles. "This is an evoking of a character. That's really where the show lives: in the imagined conversations of their private life, which is something that no one knows. I think that's what it gets a lot of criticism for. How can you know what they talk about in their private lives? The obvious answer is we don't, but we have an incredible writer, a dramatist, who imagines based on exhaustive research, and that's really part of the fascination of the show."

Debicki notes that Season 5 is unique because "in the journey of The Crown so far out of all the seasons, this is the most visual content we have of the Royal Family. In the '90s, everything had started to be filmed, and also it was the birth of the 24-hour news cycle, so there's just this incredible amount of content that we have access to. Diana was the most photographed person in the world at that time. As an actor, you open the portal, and this huge tsunami of information comes at you. I happily swam around in it."

Season 5 also depicts Charles' rekindling things with his old flame Camilla Parker-Bowles, played by Olivia Williams. "One of the great things about The Crown is we get to see those sort of imagined intimate moments, which maybe give us a better perspective on someone that we've judged," Williams says. "Charles and Camilla  seem to have a very healthy sense of humor about what at times must be an unbearable predicament. And that is the thing that I most want to show."

Manville takes over the role of Elizabeth's sister, played previously by Vanessa Kirby and Helena Bonham Carter. To prepare for the role, "I had a lot of documentaries to watch, pictures, loads to read, but finally the scripts arrived, and that's it," Manville recalls. "All the books I read have different people's versions of events. So you've got to let it go in and just sink in, but then you almost forget about it because finally the scripts come, and that's what you work with."

Claudia Harrison (Humans), who plays Elizabeth's daughter Anne in Season 5, notes that "Anne's an extraordinary character. She's not there to make people feel better about themselves, but she is superb at her job and is a proper feminist. She's someone we can really look up to, and I think she has no sense of entitlement."

Miller (Elementary) joins the cast as Major, the latest Prime Minister to work alongside Queen Elizabeth. "I think Jonny Lee Miller is an absolute triumph in the role and a real surprise," series creator Peter Morgan says.