‘The Crown’ Season 6 Has Nothing From Prince Harry’s ‘Spare’ Memoir to Taint the Storyline, Creator Says
If the royal family is concerned about unflattering anecdotes from Spare coloring the storyline of The Crown Season 6, they don’t have to stress. Peter Morgan, creator of the award-winning Netflix original series about Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, has revealed he purposely didn’t read Prince Harry’s memoir.
‘The Crown’ creator Peter Morgan didn’t want Harry’s ‘Spare’ memoir to ‘inhabit’ his ‘thinking’
A page, a chapter? How about the prologue detailing Harry’s “secret meeting” with King Charles III and Prince William in 2021? Morgan told Variety he hasn’t read any of Harry’s best-selling book, Spare, which hit shelves on Jan. 10, 2023. More specifically, he avoided it while writing The Crown Season 6.
“I’ve not read a word of it. Not that I wouldn’t be interested,” Morgan said. The reason, he explained, is because he “didn’t want his [Harry’s] voice to inhabit my thinking too much.”
“I’ve got a lot of sympathy with him, a lot of sympathy,” the creator of The Crown went on. “But I didn’t want to read his book.”
“The only thing I do [is] little bits of dramatization of Harry, but mainly only in relationship to William,” he added.
Prince Harry doesn’t talk about ‘The Crown’ with Morgan or Netflix executives
After leaving life as working royals in 2020, Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, inked a multi-year Netflix deal rumored to be worth $100 million. Since then, they’ve been the subject of a much-talked-about December 2022 docuseries as well as producers on Live to Lead.
August 2023’s docuseries on the Invictus Games, which were founded by Harry, marked their most recent Netflix project. Next is producing the film adaption of Carley Fortune’s novel Meet Me At The Lake.
Despite all of that, Harry doesn’t discuss The Crown with Morgan or anyone at the streaming giant. When asked about Harry being a fan of the series, Morgan remarked: “I haven’t heard it from his lips,” before adding, “And I’ve never had the conversation with him about it.”
Meanwhile, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos told the outlet he’s never talked about The Crown with Harry either. “We keep a wall around this topic when we talk,” he said, “for obvious reasons.”
‘The Crown’ Season 6 premieres in two parts
The highly anticipated sixth and final season of The Crown is, at the time of writing, just weeks away from dropping. Part I, that is, because this time around, the show’s doing things a bit differently.
Instead of all 10 episodes hitting Netflix at once, The Crown Season 6 will premiere in two parts. Part 1, episodes 1-4, premiere on Nov. 16, and Part II, episodes 5-10, on Dec. 14
The last season of The Crown covers the years 1997 to 2005. The first installment centers mostly around Diana, and the second on Queen Elizabeth and the then-Prince of Wales.
King Charles’s wedding to Queen Camilla, then known as Camilla Parker Bowles, played by Olivia Williams, is included. So is more screen time for young William (Rufus Kampa, Ed McVey) and Harry (Fflyn Edwards and Luther Ford).
The Crown Seasons 1-5 are available on Netflix.
