Emily in Paris actress Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu has revealed that she will be appearing in the forthcoming season of The Crown.
Having won admiring reviews for her role of marketing boss Sylvie Grateau – who frequently butts horns with younger American marketing executive Emily Cooper, played by Lily Collins – Leroy-Beaulieu is set to come to the attention of a whole new audience with a role in the fifth season of the British royal drama. Both are Netflix shows.
The Crown‘s next season will focus on tumultuous events in the 1990s, when the headlines were dominated by the collapsing marriages of three of the Queen’s four children, and even a fire at Windsor Castle, the Queen’s weekend residence where she later spent lockdown.
Leroy-Beaulieu told the UK’s Mail on Sunday, “It was a very small thing but it was a lot of fun and I was so, so happy to be in it. Every episode is like a little film on its own. It’s crazily well written.”
The newspaper reported that the French actress’s role is that of Monique Ritz, widow of Charles Ritz who sold his family-named Paris hotel to Mohamed Al Fayed in 1979. It was this hotel where Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Fayed, Mohamed’s son, spent their final evening before the car crash that killed them both in August 1997, a tragedy that plunged the UK into mourning and tested the public’s affection for its monarchy in unprecedented fashion.
Leroy-Beaulieu, who made her screen debut in 1983 in Roger Vadim’s film Surprise Party, also starred as Catherine Barneville in the Netflix series Call My Agent! She told the newspaper of the similar casting offers she had received since, “I have received a lot of offers but I have been lucky enough to be able to turn them down because they lacked imagination.”
The Crown’s fifth season will see some new faces in familiar roles including Imelda Staunton taking over from Olivia Colman as the Queen, The Affair’s Dominic West as Prince Charles, Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana, Jonathan Pryce as Prince Philip and Jonny Lee Miller as British Prime Minister John Major.
