In conversation with Annie Sulzberger, Head of Research for “The Crown” TV Series
Annie Sulzberger is an avid reader with a great sense of humor and a passion for discovery. Her curiosity drives her to always dig deeper without settling. In this interview, she teaches us the importance of perseverance, curiosity and summarization and shares curious stories from her experience working as the Head of Research for “The Crown” Netflix TV Series.
I have always been interested in how memories shape our passions, interests and careers. Do you feel that there were any particular experiences such as things you saw growing up or conversations you heard at the dinner table, that might have led you towards becoming the head of research for “The Crown”?
I grew up with a mother and father who were former reporters, so I think that I inherited the inclination towards curiosity from those discussions. Investigating anything, be that relationships with your friends, asking questions about what's in the paper, being curious about the things that might be unanswered on television or in a book probably shaped my interest in what I do, more than a specific interest in a specific subject. I think it's worth saying that for researchers in television we go from project to project and what you work on may not align with your specific interests.
Also, film and television were one of the things that I particularly engaged with my father, that was our kind of activity. I grew up watching Star Trek with him and he introduced me to James Bond at an early age, probably at an inappropriately early age. I remember my first film memory was The Great Escape, that I watched with him when I was probably only five. Again, is it appropriate to show a five-year-old a story about a WWII camp? I don’t know. I was just fascinated by the world building on screen, and that fascination never dulled me.
When I look for new members of the staff in the team one of the things I am looking for is: are you curious about things? Do you want to keep digging deeper? If you are willing to accept just what a book tells you, then we might not get to the second, third or fourth level that we need to find the interesting stories that we are going to tell.
What sources do you use in your research for “The Crown”?
Peter Morgan, the writer, has made the research of the show to be at the heart of it. Having done this job for over a decade now, I have never been on a show where research is so integral and respected, in all honesty, as it is here.
Our job is to provide Peter with as much information about what truly happened, what we know where the responses from our main characters, what their personalities were like, how they evolved over the decade and how they interfaced with one another.
Initially, our role is to help write the show, then it moves forward and disperses throughout the other departments; for the actors if they want to know more, the directors to have more of a grounding in the research before filming, the art department will ask us to do a lot of things with them and costume for images or advice. It's a constant conversation.
We use all forms of media: video archives, documentaries, there’s even a fly-on-the-wall documentary tha shows the Queen in 1990, where you get good a sense of how she moves and talks with the people that work with her. We read newspapers religiously, having database accounts for every newspaper and magazine company. We have a library of probably close to 1000 books at this point and we also make further trips to the British Library for more niche publications as well as the National Archive for original source material.
The nature of the publications shift; you have to use your judgement. Tabloids become much more significant in the 1980s, so you need to be a bit more skeptical about print journalism. This is surprising, because up until that point newspapers were kind of the authority.
Are there any details from your research for “The Crown” that you would enjoy the viewer to notice?
A lot of the visual detail you get on screen is courtesy of the art department, and they will have done their own research. One of the things I loved that they recreated was with Philip in episode 4, season 3, when he calls in Princess Anne for the first time. He has this intercom system built into his desk, indicating that he was a modernizer, inserting technology in his work space (this was something we had found in the 1969 Royal Documentary).
Most of what we do is story driven. I researched Reverend Billy Graham for episode 6, season 2, when he comes to the UK and forms a very specific bond with Queen Elizabeth. I probably spent three weeks researching the Duke of Windsor Nazi files, trying to track how they got from place to place, how they were procured and tried to be sent away to be hidden. Many of those events will never come into the show in more than a few lines of dialogue, but they might lead to a really beautiful scene.
In series 1, when the Queen is in Kenya in treetops and her father dies, the eagle soaring by came from an account of Michael Parker, the Duke of Edinburgh’s private secretary, who claimed that an eagle swooped into treetops as the king died.
For episode 6 of season 3, when Charles goes to The University of Aberystwyth to study Welsh, we contacted his professor’s daughter who gave us her father’s ties, and the actor in the scenes in that episode who is playing Professor Tedi Millward is wearing the real Millward’s ties, allowing him to tap into the real character.
Finally, Jackie Kennedy being rude about her time at the palace in series 2, that came from a Cecil Beaton memoir. In a passing comment he said that she publicly spoke at a dinner about how unimpressed she was about the Queen and Buckingham Palace. Peter realized he could use this as an episode that looks at women in power. In one way, Queen Elizabeth does not have a lot of power at home, but her physical presence was powerful enough to keep Ghana in the Commonwealth. On the other hand, Jackie Kennedy is one of the most visible women in the world, and you would think very powerful, but in private she lives a life of extreme vulnerability and passivity.
How have the skills you acquired studying at the Courtauld helped you in your career?
Having a visual education has been very helpful. That alone probably got me into a room with a producer interested in hiring me. In this job you have to be incredibly observant, and in Art History your eyes are trained to pick up on certain things. This visual style also helps when you are translating research to the directors, the art department or the cinematographers.
Academic rigor in general helps, you can only really equate my job to a mix of investigative journalism and academia. We study, we read, read and reread and we write based on what we’ve digested. Some of the documents we write – and we do about 500 documents a series – are very academic and scholarly in nature, but instead of trying to prove a thesis, we try to make the research more vibrant. It’s the same sort of evidence and research that you are pulling together, communicated somewhat differently, but when you read these documents you still feel that they are incredibly well researched.
Particularly at the Courtauld, where I worked with the fantastic Professor David Solkin, you are taught to write very clearly and to present your argument efficiently. That is incredibly important in this job. That first paragraph has to give you a sense of where we are going with the document and has to hook you really fast so that you want to keep reading it. Character documents have to be written for storytellers and I think the Courtauld gave me the capacity to analyze my own writing skills differently, and self-edit in a different way.
Do you have any advice for students that want to take on a career path similar to yours? What skills are a must?
The ability to summarize and the skill to acknowledge what is crucial information and what isn’t. I think you can work as a finance director and it would be just as significant as it would be in my job. It’s something that takes years to hone, because you get thrilled by the details. But that’s not what they are asking for. What they are asking for is a brief entry point to this world, then the details will follow.
Essential to this is an enjoyment of reading. One of the ways into this job is getting into a production company as a reader. A lot of TV shows and films are adaptations, so production companies invest a bit of money to positions where you literally just read books and decide whether or not they want to make them into a movie. With that, your sole purpose is to summarize, summarize, summarize, because you are asked to read say a 400-page book and the Development Producer will want a 2-page summary. And in that 2-page summary they may also want your assessment on whether you think this is an option viable for TV film and what you see in it.
Tenacity. I will always ask my team to dig further and further and the ones that are the most successful are the ones with the desire and curiosity to learn more.
A healthy skepticism towards source material is important. You can’t trust everything you read. We need to know as much about the royal biographers as we need to know about the members of the Royal Family because if the royal biographers have made their career on being scandalous about various members then that’s always how their books are, and we need to be aware of that. But if the biographers tend to take a more authorized view, which means that they are close to the Royal Family members, you need to know that as well. It is important to know what their audience is and who they are playing up to.
As long as your passion for the material comes out, I can follow the narrative that you have passionately presented to me, and I can see your vision in it, then that's a success.
Thank you, Annie, for sharing your stories and advice with us!
The way your memories have shaped your curiosity and thrill for discovery is food for thought. Learning how consciously or unconsciously the atmospheres we grew up in are still part of us is something that has always fascinated me. Moreover, being a student at the Courtauld, it is very interesting to learn how you adapted the skills you acquired in your job as a researcher. You transformed skills that I thought were mostly theoretical, into practical real-life experiences.
