From Deadpool to Challengers: Where the Cast of The Crown Is 8 Months After the Show's Curtain Call

Emma Corrin

Emma Corrin, who played Princess Diana in season 4 of The Crown, is currently starring in the summer blockbuster Deadpool & Wolverine, which has hit over $1 billion at the box office. In the film, Corrin, 28, plays a mysterious villain, listed in credits as Cassandra Nova, at the center of the movie alongside Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman. (An article on Marvel’s official website describes the character as more or less an evil twin of the X-Men’s Professor X, portrayed in past X-Men films by Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy.)

“On films like this, the tone and the energy is really set by the people at the top, and it was a gorgeous thing to be a part of because you really felt included and welcomed,” Corrin previously told PEOPLE. “It was a little family.”

Josh O'Connor

Since playing a younger Prince Charles in seasons 3 and 4 of The Crown, Josh O’Connor has kept busy, perhaps most notably playing Patrick Zweig in this year’s tennis film Challengers alongside Zendaya and Mike Faist. 

In addition to the movie’s success at the box office, O’Connor experienced a culinary delight while on set. At one point, O’Connor and Faist’s characters share a churro, and it was O’Connor’s first time ever having the treat, he said earlier this year. “That was my first churro, and I hadn’t eaten anything that day,” O’Connor, 33, said in an interview with Capital FM. “So I was starving, and tasted my first churro — and churros are extraordinary.” That moment wasn’t even in the script, Zendaya, 27, later confirmed.

Vanessa Kirby

Vanessa Kirby, 36, starred as Princess Margaret in the main cast of seasons 1 and 2 of The Crown and appeared again in season 5 in a guest role. Since her time on the show, Kirby has joined the Mission Impossible franchise, appearing in 2023’s Mission Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One as Alanna Mitsopolis (otherwise known as White Widow). She’ll resume the role in the as-yet-untitled eighth Mission Impossible film. 

And action movies seem to be her new focus, as she’s currently filming The Fantastic Four: First Steps, cementing her place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Sue Storm (also known as Invisible Woman). Fantastic Four, also starring Pedro Pascal, The Bear’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Stranger Things’ Joseph Quinn, is due in theaters on July 25, 2025, PEOPLE previously reported.

Claire Foy

Perhaps the original breakout star of The Crown was Claire Foy, who played a young Queen Elizabeth to much acclaim in seasons 1 and 2, earning her a Golden Globe and two Emmys. Since wrapping her time on the show, Foy, 40, has appeared in films like 2022’s Women Talking and 2023’s All of Us Strangers, and the 2021 television miniseries A Very British Scandal, where she played Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll. (She also returned in a guest role for the final three seasons of The Crown.)

Ahead of The Crown’s 2016 premiere, Foy told Variety she was “very proud” to originate the role of the Queen, and that she did “loads of research” for the part, which was later played by Olivia Colman and Staunton. “I found she’s very challenging as a person for me to play because we’re not massively similar — vocally, physically, and she’s [a] very [in control], stoic person,” Foy said. “That’s what I thought would be brilliant about it. I would have to get involved and go the whole way.”

After her time on the show ended, Foy told PEOPLE, “I let it go and moved on, and I think that’s quite healthy.”

She added, “I don’t feel like I’m defined by playing Queen Elizabeth. It’s a huge honor that people liked that character and therefore see me as that character. So, I’m not trying to actively go against that.”

Elizabeth Debicki

Debicki has already won a Golden Globe Award for her portrayal of Princess Diana in seasons 5 and 6 of The Crown, and, after being nominated twice for an Emmy, has a chance to take one home next month. Debicki previously told PEOPLE she “learned a lot” playing the late Princess of Wales: “I don’t think you come anywhere near sort of learning as much as I learned about this character and not feel that the only thing worth doing in life is putting love into the world,” she said.

Of Diana herself, Debicki said, “I think I learned things about the degree to which she had an enormous and wicked sense of humor, the difficulties that she was facing, the way that she triumphed through them, the way that she used her voice in a way that was sort of very progressive at the time,” Debicki, 33, said. 

Most recently, Debicki starred in the thriller MaXXXine as Elizabeth Bender.

Matt Smith

Since his time playing Prince Philip in seasons 1 and 2 of The Crown ended in 2017, Matt Smith, 41, has appeared in nine films and four television series, including starring in the ongoing House of the Dragon, where he plays Daemon Targaryen. The show is a bona fide hit, but Smith told PEOPLE ahead of the show’s season 2 premiere in June that he still got jitters: “It’s like anything else — we’re all nervous now because we’re hoping that people like it,” he said. “We think that we’ve done a good job, but it’s possible the audience might just go, ‘Oh my God, what have you done?’”

In 2020, he even reunited onstage — albeit socially distanced — with Foy, who played his character Prince Philip’s wife Queen Elizabeth on The Crown. They starred together in Lungs at the Old Vic London, which was presented via a live stream on a nightly basis to up to 1,000 people a night, PEOPLE previously reported.

Emerald Fennell

The same year Emerald Fennell wrapped up her time playing Camilla Parker-Bowles on The Crown, she made her feature film directorial debut with Promising Young Woman in 2020. Her success continued from there, directing 2023’s hit Saltburn and the forthcoming John Wick Presents: Ballerina. Though her focus seems mostly behind the camera at the moment, she stepped in front of it to play Midge in last year’s smash Barbie; she also won an Academy Award in 2021 for her writing, winning Best Original Screenplay for Promising Young Woman.

Of playing a younger Camilla opposite O’Connor as Prince Charles, Fennell, 38, said in 2018 she was “absolutely over the moon, and completely terrified, to be joining so many hugely talented people on The Crown. I absolutely love Camilla, and am very grateful that my teenage years have well prepared me for playing a chain-smoking serial snogger with a pudding bowl haircut.”

In 2022, the real-life Camilla — then the Duchess of Cornwall — met the fictional Camilla during a reception to mark International Women’s Day at Clarence House, the royal’s home. “It was particularly nice to meet her today on International Women’s Day because, you know, she does so much for so many particularly female charities,” Fennell said at the time. She then quipped she “was nervous I might be thrown in the Tower — but so far, so good.”