The Crown has found its new Prince Philip, Netflix confirmed to Vanity Fair on Wednesday.
Tobias Menzies, best known for playing Edmure Tully on Game of Thrones and both Frank Randall and Black Jack Randall on Outlander, will pick up where Matt Smith left off, by playing the real-life royal in the shows third and fourth seasons.
The casting comes two months after Paul Bettanybowed out of consideration for the part because of the time commitment required to film the sweeping period drama in the U.K.
In a conversation with Vanity Fair last month, The Crowns casting director Nina Gold explained why casting the period dramas third season—which jumps forward about 10 years—was especially challenging.
“Not only are we casting real-life characters,” explained Gold, who cast Tully on Game of Thrones, “but as we get closer to the present day, many of these people are very much alive. So we have to honor them by picking the right actor to play them—while making a link between the actors who played these characters in the first seasons.”
Earlier this week, Menzies hinted that he was not sure whether he would be returning to Game of Thrones, telling Digital Spy that his character is “obviously somewhere in a prison, hes still around alive somewhere . . . I feel like they have so many stories to tie-up, whether thats a story theyll want to go back to, I dont know.”
On Wednesday, Menziess Outlander co-star Caitriona Balfe celebrated the casting by tweetingthe initial report along with the message, “Congratulations darling. So excited for you and so excited to see this!!!”
Last fall, The CrowncastOlivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II.Claire Foy, who played Queen Elizabeth during the dramas first two seasons, has joked that audiences will quickly forget about the original cast.
“Youll forget all about me and the rest of the cast,” Foy joked in December. “Youll be like, Who are they? Were the warm-up act.”
Deadline reported that Menzies “signed on for the next two seasons, and begins shooting this summer in the U.K.”
The Crowns third season will pick up in the 1970s and introduceCamilla Parker Bowles, then Camilla Shand, who met Prince Charles at a polo match in 1971. While little else is known about The Crowns new season, Nina Gold teased that Philip and Elizabeths eldest children, Charles and Anne, will have larger roles than they did in the initial seasons.
“Charles, Camilla, and Anne are going to be pretty interesting characters to follow, because they are just coming into their own,” said Gold. “Weve cast a pretty wide net for these new young characters.”
Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Julie MillerJulie Miller is a Senior Hollywood writer for Vanity Fairs website.
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