Impressive scenery, spectacular and well-tailored costumes, dozens of extras, mysterious choral music and, in general, a fascinating ritual.

Thus, he presentedCrown“, his award-winning television series Netflix about the life of the British royal family, one of the most important events in the British monarchy: her coronation queen elizabeth ii. Fifth episode of the first season titled “Smoke and mirrors(2016) captures in detail everything that happened on June 2, 1953 at Westminster Abbey.In London.

King George VI’s eldest daughter is preparing to formalize the most important role of her life 14 months after her father’s death. 25-year-old Elizabeth (played by Claire Foy) traverses the abbey’s long corridor, approaching the throne with trepidation but seriousness at the same time. Minutes before she puts on the crown, the eyes of 8,000 participants (including heads of state and blue bloods), as well as the rest of the world watching the ceremony on a small screen, are fixed on her. Elizabeth’s coronation is groundbreaking as it is the first British ceremony of its kind to be broadcast to millions of homes via the BBC. However, to protect this sacred moment, Elizabeth hides from the cameras as she is the anointed queen. To give the episode a more realistic feel, real footage from 1953 was also used.

How the coronation episode was filmed

Peter Morgan’s fictional series has remained largely faithful to real-life events before and after the coronation, giving the episode an original and interesting twist. The coronation ceremony is divided into two parts: on the one hand, we watch what is happening in Westminster, and on the other, we watch a party at the house of George VI’s brother and former King of Britain Edward Windsor in France.

And while Buckingham had over a year to prepare for Elizabeth’s coronation, the show’s cast had only a few weeks to make the ceremony as grand as they could. But besides the lack of time, production designer Martin Childs and costume designer Michelle Clapton had another “burden”: to recreate the ritual in as much detail as possible. This is because there are documents on the Internet, so the risk of the public losing faith in the production was great.

“We did all the dresses, the gowns, the capes, the royal dress, and really the amount of work was huge,” Clapton told the magazine. Vanity Fair. “We had our own workshop, in which 5-6 people sewed the costumes of the main characters, and then several different rooms where the details for the rest of the dresses were created. In addition, we had people whose job it was to print designs.”

And while the coronation dress seems like the most important part of the day, it really isn’t. At the ceremony, Elizabeth wore several symbolic dresses, including a completely different anointing outfit. “The symbolism of it was something that touched me and surprised me. The fact that they were all wearing tiny crowns was a surprise to me.”

The monarch also requested two different outfits for the ceremony: a white satin dress with gold and silver embroidery and a red cape sewn with ermine fur. To create the ermine, Clapton and her team used faux fur. They even added black dots to the white trim to make it look authentic.

After the queen, costume designers continued to work on the outfits of the rest of the royal family.

One goal the film crew ultimately missed was filming inside the abbey itself. Thus, the actors again headed to Ely Cathedral, where the wedding scenes of Elizabeth were filmed. “The hosts were amazing. We’ve only had a week of use, but we’ve made huge changes to the site,” Childs said.

He was delighted with the process of creating the abbey, as it would look from the inside, with scaffolding in which TV people hide cameras inside boxes. “This whole illusion was attractive, so we could watch the event through the eyes of the film crew who were filming the video at the time,” the production designer told the magazine. “Elizabeth was serious about the burden she was to inherit. He had to believe in the rite. The seriousness of this moment was something that was first told publicly and we respected that story and made it work.”

Queen in fiction

Since her ascension to the throne, the Queen has inspired film and television creators, writers and artists, becoming one of the most beloved subjects to explore in pop culture today.

However, no other fictional series or film has dealt with enthronement as much as The Crown. A large number of directors pay attention to such stories as the Queen’s youth (King’s Night, 2015), the problems in the British monarchy (The Queen, 2006), the dysfunctional marriage of his son Charles with Princess Diana (Diana, 2013). ) and Princess Diana herself (Spencer, 2021).

With the forthcoming coronation of King Charles expected to be watched by millions, fiction and non-fiction creators will no doubt have new material to use in the hope that it will generate the same interest as the image of his mother. .