Kirsty Mckenzie
IT’S been a long wait for fans of The Crown itching for their season 4 fix of the megahit Netflix show.
With Gillian Anderson and Emma Corrin joining the project to play two of the most famous women in recent history (Thatcher and Princess Di, natch) we’ve been on the edge of our sofas for months waiting for the 10 episodes to drop.
The all-star cast, jawdropping costumes and stunting scenery have us all hooked – and also make the show one of the most expensive TV series ever to be made.
The first season cost a rumoured £100 million to produce and so you can’t blame producers for trying to pinch the pennies where they can.
But one cost saving effort has got tongues wagging, particular amid beady-eyed viewers familiar with Spain.
In the sixth episode of the new series, viewers follow a young Charles and Diana to Australia for the 1983, six-week tour of down under. But fans were quick to spot that the key scenes were filmed a lot closer to home, with Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane all being shot in the city of Malaga. And the brief appearance of a well-known city in the episode – named Terra Nullius – has had Spanish fans pretty excited.
One Twitter user joked that Brisbane ‘was filmed in the most Spanish city you’ve ever seen in your life’.
Another spotted that one scene was captured from the top of AC Hotel Malaga Palacio.
If it isn’t enough seeing Spain double-up as Oz, another bonus of the show being filmed on the Costa del Sol was the sight of actors Emma Corrin, Josh O’Connor and Richard Roxburgh muddling with the locals and enjoying the Spanish sun during filming last year.
Roxburgh – who plays Bob Hawke in the new season – said Almería, where Clint Eastwood filmed many of his famous spaghetti western films, has ‘a desert kind of light, so it worked in that way’.
But the makers of the Crown needed a little more than sunlight to trick the viewer into believing the scenes were shot Down Under.
Netflix said they relieved on ‘a little cinematic magic’, using special effects to superpose iconic Ozzy spots like Uluru and The Opera House was into the background.
In a post to Twitter, the streaming site wrote: “Malaga, Spain became Sydney (with, of course, VFX of the Opera House), & scenes were also shot inside London’s Australia House. The ep also includes Diana & Charles’ climb of Uluru in 1983, which is — of course — now closed for climbing to respect the wishes of traditional owners.”
