‘The Crown’: How Spain’s Andalusia Doubled for Adelaide, Athens and Hollywood
07.09.2022 - 19:13
/ variety.com
Anna Marie de la Fuente In the opening scene of Episode 8, Season 4 of Netflix’s “The Crown,” a young Princess Elizabeth, played by Claire Foy, addresses the British Commonwealth from Capetown, South Africa, on the occasion of her 21st birthday. What follows is a montage of people listening to her radio broadcast speech in different member countries, from India to Australia, to Jamaica and a number of African nations. These scenes were all shot in Spain, encapsulating — in less than three minutes — the great diversity of the country’s locations. Several scenes in Seasons 3, 4 and the upcoming Season 5 of “The Crown” have all been shot in Spain while the sixth and final one, which starts shooting in late August, promises to be the show’s “largest investment in Spain in terms of time,” says independent producer Martin Harrison, one of the key producers behind the award-winning series for Sony backed London-based shingle Left Bank Pictures.
Working closely with Mike Day, CEO of Palma de Mallorca-based Palma Pictures, with whom Left Bank had previously collaborated on darkly comic series “Mad Dogs,” the producers found sites in southern Spain that doubled for Princess Margaret’s hideaway on Mustique Island (Atlanterra in Cádiz), a sheep farm in Australia (Almeria), Athens (San Juan de Aznalfarache, Seville) and a Hollywood studio in the 1960s (Tablada Naval Base, Seville), among others. “Given the history of the royal family and the Commonwealth, we were inevitably bound to shoot three to four weeks somewhere abroad, mostly in tropical countries. Spain ticked all the boxes,” he says, citing the Southern European country’s legacy of filmmaking, its “fantastic” crews, the competitive rebates, its sub-tropical climate, the