BAFTA nominated actress Colman is set to replace Claire Foy in the role of Queen Elizabeth II, for the third and fourth series of the Netflix series.

Having won critical acclaim for her roles in Broadchurch and The Night Manager, Colman will be following in The Crown’s tradition of its leading ladies holding a Golden Globe (Foy won for The Crown, Colman for The Night Manager). Also, this will now be Colman’s third time playing a member of the Royal family after 2012’s Hyde Park on Hudson, where she played the Queen Mother, and Yorgos Lanthimo’s upcoming 2018 film The Favourite, where Colman is taking up the role of Queen Anne.

The Crown’s third season is to be set sometime after 1963, and whilst Colman will be playing the Queen, there has been no word to who will be replacing Matt Smith as Prince Phillip. However, in the second series coming up, we are set to see some new faces in the form of Michael C. Hall as President John F Kennedy and Jodi Balfour as his wife Jackie Kennedy as well as Matthew Goode in the role of Lord Snowdon.

The second season of The Crown is due to debut on December 8th, and whilst the third and fourth seasons have not yet been officially commissioned, they are expected to continue with filming on the following series due to start sometime early 2018. Seeing as the first series was the most expensive series ever made, (costing £101.5m), we can only assume Netflix has some serious money on its hands.