'The Crown' Season 3 Trailer Shows Olivia Colman's Queen Elizabeth In Action

A new actor is stepping into the Queen's shoes. In The Crown's new Season 3 trailer, which Netflix released on Sept. 20, Olivia Colman's Queen Elizabeth II focuses on change. After the royal's new portrait is unveiled, a man begins saying that the profile is "an elegant reflection of her majesty's transition from young woman to..." before Colman's Queen Elizabeth interjects, "old bat?" In the clip, she also goes on to note that there are "a great many changes," before finally remarking: "Nothing one can do about it. One just has to get on with it."

When Netflix premieres The Crown Season 3 on Nov. 17, viewers will notice that Colman stepping into actor Claire Foy's former role — Foy played Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown's first two seasons — isn't the only change. With the series jumping ahead in time to span 1964 to 1977, the new Season 3 cast members include Helena Bonham Carter as Princess Margaret, Tobias Menzies as The Duke of Edinburgh, and Josh O'Connor as Prince Charles.

Netflix also revealed the following synopsis in a press release:

"The third season of The Crown sees a new guard sweep into Downing Street, as Queen Elizabeth and her family struggle to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing Britain. From cold-war paranoia, through to the jet-set and the space age — the exuberance of the 1960s and the long hangover of the 1970s — Elizabeth and the Royals must adapt to a new, more liberated, but also more turbulent world."

Netflix previously released The Crown Season 3's first teaser on Aug. 12. The brief clip showed Colman's character — clad in an evening gown, blue sash, and crown — appear through an opened door, before staring directly into the camera. Up until then, the only other glimpse fans had gotten of the new incarnation of the queen came in July 2018 when Netflix released a still of the Oscar winner in character wearing a pink suit and sipping a cup of tea.

Colman told Vanity Fair in Nov. 2018 that she was "in love" with Foy's portrayal during the Netflix series' first two seasons. In preparation to take over the role, however, she said she dug through massive files sent by the research department, in addition to watching archival footage.  

"You watch her move and how her movements change.… The way she holds her handbag," Colman shared with VF. "I'm still not very good at physical copying. One of the directors kept shouting, 'Queen, not farmer.' So I’ll keep trying."

Colman also had an accidental meeting with the Queen in real life. "It was at a British Film Institute gathering to raise the profile of British film, independent film," she recalled to Entertainment Weekly in August. "We suddenly found ourselves, 200 people, in a big queue. I thought maybe we were going in to have some food. I hadn't read the order of the day. [I] looked around the corner, and there was the Queen and Prince Philip, and went, 'Oh! Oh no! I don’t know what to do!'"

Even so, she seemed to handle the chance meeting gracefully — with a little help from a stranger. As Colman added to EW: "A gentleman with epaulettes said, 'Don’t overdo it, little bow, and you say, Your Majesty, and Your Royal Highness, and go. Make it as swift as possible and go'. I managed to remember what to say, sort of sticky-handed and bit sort of stumbly. That was it!"

As the latest teaser for The Crown seems to indicate, Colman has since found her footing.