A trailer released yesterday (August 10) promises a tense new season of The Crown, Netflix’s epic retelling of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II — and, as ever, you can rely on us to bring you the most important news.
Matt Smith has grown a beard.
Okay, maybe not grown it as such — we know from his time as the Eleventh Doctor that he can be very creative with fake facial hair, but he’s sporting a full-on mouth-wig in his role as the Queen’s consort Prince Philip.
From the looks of things, all is not well in the royal household. The Queen, played by Claire Foy for one last season before a new cast is found, looks pretty fed up with her husband, to say the least.
As Lord Mountbatten (Greg Wise) tells her in the clip, “You married a wild spirit. Trying to tame him is no use.”
We’ll say! Just look at that fuzz!
The trailer also gives us our first glimpse of Dexter‘s Michael C. Hall as President John F. Kennedy, who joins John Lithgow as one of the few Americans in the cast, and Jodi Balfour as First Lady Jackie.
The new season is expected to pick up where the first left off, with political tensions increasing between Britain and Egypt, and then span the eight years leading up to 1964, meaning it’ll probably cover the assassination of JFK and the scandal that brought down Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.
He’ll be played by Anton Lesser, who’s best known as Qyburn in Game of Thrones, while Downton‘s Matthew Goode is also new to the cast as Antony Armstrong-Jones, the society photographer who ultimately married Princess Margaret (Vanessa Kirby).
See if you can spot all of them:
Oo-er. That final “if only” from the queen sounds more than a little barbed.
Do you think it’s that beard that’s got Liz nettled?