John Lithgow is a great actor with lots of range.
Having said that his Churchill in “The Crown” is just passable. He always looks like Lithgow playing Churchill, he never quite embodies him like Oldman in “Darkest Hour.” He is too tall and that break the magic and somehow I feel like he doesn’t like him anyway. The accent is ok but the mannerisms are done correctly.
The Crown’s strength has never been it’s accurate portrayals of anyone aside from Elizabeth, Phillip, and Margaret (IMO). It’s JFK and LBJ were absolutely terrible.
Definitely, but I excpected more from Lithgow, he’s a big shot. It’s not appearance, it’s the whole demeanor.
I like Lithgow but haven’t seen the Crown, I thought he was a terrible choice for that remake of Pet Semetary though, he did not play a good Jud at all.
For the most part I thought they did an excellent job casting The Crown, but there were a few times that they really missed their mark. For Churchill they needed someone much shorter and more British than Lithgow. On the other hand they needed someone taller than Helena Bonham Carter to play Margaret. (The actress who played her the first two seasons was very good I thought.) And as far as Matt Smith goes, I just kept seeing him as Doctor Who, but I guess that’s on me.
The major problem with Lithgow’s casting was his height, which is the one thing he could not really disguise. So he had to play him with a pronounced stoop. The real Churchill in old age did have a stoop, but that only emphasised that he was never tall. Lithgow in contrast, even with the stoop, loomed over everyone else. That other aspects of his performance weren’t very accurate was less of a problem. So many actors have played Churchill that not very good versions aren’t exactly rare.
Although arguably it’s their height relative to the other actors that matters, Helena Bonham Carter is actually slightly taller than the real Princess Margaret was. In contrast, Vanessa Kirby is far taller, which was the only flaw at all in her casting.
Matt Smith’s performance did have a Doctor Who vibe, but Prince-Philip-as-Doctor-Who weirdly worked.
The casting of the more minor parts is actually one of the most impressive aspects of all three series so far. Even for some of the obscure people, who doubtless mean nothing to non-British audiences, they clearly make an effort to find actors who plausibly resemble the real person. Their hits outweigh the misses. A case in point would be Lady Glenconner. When they filmed the third series, they could not have foreseen that in late 2019 she would be properly famous in the UK, with her memoirs at the top of the bestsellers lists. Yet the actress they cast could, when first seen, only be her. The trick presumably is lots of research combined with fees so big they can get any actors they want.
The actor playing LBJ, Clancy Brown, doesn’t quite look like him but he gets the feeling and the persona very well.
Matt Smith gets it very right. I’m not a serious Dr. Who fan, it even took me two episodes two get it was him, so he was never Duke of Dr. Who to me.
I didn’t know HBC was taller than Princess Margaret. HBC always seems kind of short and stumpy to me, and I always thought that Princess Margaret was fairly tall. I blame Monty Python and their “Dummy Princess Margaret” who seemed to be about seven feet tall.