FANS of the hit Netflix drama The Crown know that a number of the scenes were shot in South Africa.
So it’s no surprise that the show’s creators were spotted in the Cape
this month shooting new scenes
for the second season of the series which dramatises the early years of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, who as a 25-year-old newlywed, faced the daunting prospect of leading the world’s most famous monarchy.
In one scene, shot at the Hermanus Old Harbour, Prince Philip and his family flee their Greek royal residence on the island of Corfu.
It’s September 1922 and the Royal Navy, dispatched by King George V, arrive on a mercy mission to evacuate 18-month old Prince Philip, his four sisters, mother Princess Alice
of Battenberg and father Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark.
Netflix drama The Crown has been shooting series two in Cape Town. In this reenactment the Duke of Edinburgh as a baby and his family flee Greece in 1922. His father Andrew had returned from the Greco-Turkish war and they were exiled in France. Pictures: MIKE BEHR/NOBLE/DRAPER
The reason for their hasty departure? Baby Philip’s uncle, King Constantine I of Greece, had been forced to abdicate the throne and the military government had banished Prince Andrew from Greece for life.
In the shoot, the packed lifeboat leaves the Old Harbour heading for HMS Calypso which was not berthed off Hermanus but later photo-shopped into the scene.
From the Old Harbour, The Crown crew moved to the New Harbour which doubled as King’s Wharf Bermuda and then the nearby Arabella Hotel where the greens doubled as Bermuda’s Port Royal Course.
In the weeks that followed, the crew turned Kogel Bay into a Tongan beach, the Castle of Good Hope into a Ghanaian location and Fisantekraal Airfield into an Egyptian airforce base under attack.