EXCLUSIVE: Netflix’s Golden Globe- and SAG Award-winning period series The Crown has found its Jack and Jackie Kennedy. Michael C. Hall and Jodi Balfour are joining the upcoming Season 2 as the late President and First Lady. I’ve also confirmed the addition of Matthew Goode as Princess Margaret’s bohemian photographer husband, Tony Armstrong-Jones.
The hit series created by Peter Morgan tells the inside story of Queen Elizabeth II’s early reign as the fragile social order established after WWII breaks apart. The first season picked up Lead Drama Actor SAG Awards for stars Claire Foy and John Lithgow, and the series was named Best TV Drama at the Golden Globes.
Season 2 is currently in production and begins with soldiers in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces fighting an illegal war in Egypt, and ends with the downfall of her third Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, after a devastating scandal. The second season bears witness to the end of the age of deference, and ushers in the revolutionary era of the 1960s. Enter the Kennedys.
Balfour (Quarry, Almost Anything) is Jackie Kennedy, who the show’s creators describe as a seemingly natural First Lady, but whose charming exterior of confidence and glamour hides a shy woman who loathes public life.
Former Dexter star Hall’s JFK is most at home in front of a crowd — a natural leader and excellent public speaker who does not take kindly to being upstaged by anyone, especially his wife. Although Jackie’s accomplishments are perceived to be an asset to the president, JFK feels unmanned by his wife’s popularity. In public, he seeks revenge by flaunting his many infidelities and, behind closed doors, his jealousy surfaces in the form of anger and manipulation.
Goode’s Armstrong-Jones is a charming, passionate and avant-garde photographer who knows all the right people. His swinging sixties attitude is in stark contrast to the staid outlook of the palace that Princess Margaret is accustomed to. As their affair continues, his bohemian and sexually liberal lifestyle is put at risk by his proximity to the establishment. However, he is in some ways still the little boy crippled by polio who longs to win the approval of his status-obsessed mother.
Hall is repped by Authentic Talent & Literary Management, Hamilton Hodell and UTA. Balfour is with APA and Goode is with Dalzell and Beresford and CAA.
An air date for Season 2 has yet to be announced.
