Princess Diana Storyline crown‘s fifth season feels like a spy thriller.in marriage with her prince charles Beyond restoration, the late royal family is secretly working with the author Andrew Morton When panorama journalist Martin Bashir We share her personal story in generous detail.Inside her Kensington Palace apartment, the Princess answers Morton’s questions about cassette tapes exchanged through her intermediary, a longtime friend of Diana’s. Dr. James Colthurst. To coordinate Bashir’s interview, crown‘s Diana meets a reporter in a parking lot, sneaks a BBC camera crew into her home, and tells the palace security that they are just a delivery man who unloads a new hi-fi system. Paranoia and danger permeate the scene.
To the real Morton who wrote the bomb book Diana: Her True Story Based on tape crownThe spy thriller sensibility is accurate to his experience.
“It was like the royal version of all men of the president, It’s where danger lurked in the shadows,” Morton recalls in a Zoom interview. vanity fair On Friday. The author who wrote the biography of the new Queen Elizabeth Queen: her life, acted as a consultant. crownThis season of , he says he shared other significant historical moments with the production team.
“One of the scenes that I was surprised they didn’t do was James played the first tape at a workers’ cafe in Ruislip, north London,” Morton said, while Colthurst I will explain that I did not leave the tape out of sight. to protect Diana. “All these workers sat eating eggs and bacon. Putting on the headphones transported them to another world, the bulimic world, Camilla and other worlds I had never heard of. It was like entering a parallel universe where there was a secret and the secret was very dangerous.”
At one point during the covert operation, Morton says Colthurst had his bike hit by a passing car and one of the tapes flew across a three-lane highway. Another time, Morton returned to his office to find it ransacked and his camera stolen.
“Looking back, I think we had the right to be paranoid given what happened. [the leaked royal phone calls] Squidgygate and Camillagate,” Morton said, adding that the real-life experience is sometimes “even creepier” than portrayed in the episode. She said, “There was a time when you didn’t know if you were being followed or if you were being watched. Diana was worried that her phone would be tapped.”
A few years later her story After being released, Morton continued to communicate with Diana through Colthurst, helping Corthurst rewrite some of the princess’ speeches. Morton did not confirm her participation until after her death in 1997. [the marriage]he was looking for ways to help her, and he was totally protective of Diana in this process,” says Morton. He was kind of a self-proclaimed patron.” Thirty years after the collaboration, Morton was godmother to one of Colthurst’s daughters and said, “This is what I wanted to do to my friends in an attempt to build contacts. It’s a classic example,” he said.
Prince Harry and Princess Diana on vacation in Mallorca, Spain, August 10, 1987.By Georges De Keerle/Getty Images.
Morton, who has written two more books about Princess Diana, says he was “really upset.” Elizabeth Debickisummons the late royal family in a new episode.
“It was really like seeing a ghost,” Morton said, explaining that the scene of Diana recording Diana answering his questions in “System” particularly affected him. She said, “She was like going back to her room 30 years ago. I was blown away by how she understood every nuance of her character.”
Although the royal family saw Diana’s collaboration her true story As the ultimate act of betrayal, Morton is quick to point out that “she never regretted the book.” While working on it, he and his publisher “felt we were getting her story out there, which was very important.”
