Royal experts are demanding Prince Harry tears up his £112million Netflix deal and makes a stand over The Crown's portrayal of P...
Royal experts are demanding Prince Harry tears up his £112million Netflix deal and makes a stand over The Crown's portrayal of Princess Diana.
Royal biographer Angela Levin criticised the Duke of Sussex for not 'finding his voice' over the streaming giant's controversial portrayal of his mother.
It comes after Princess Diana's friend Jemima Khan withdrew her support for The Crown over its 'disrespectful' script after she broke up with the show's creator.
Levin, author of Harry: A Biography of a Prince, told The Sun: 'Harry has remained absolutely silent about Netflix.
'He should tear the deal up and make a stand for his mother. What's more important? Money or defending his mum? It's astonishing he can't find his voice on this.'
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle signed a deal with the streaming service last year for their new production company to make documentaries, feature films, scripted shows and children's programming.
It comes as another royal expert said today that the makers of Netflix's The Crown have stuck up 'two fingers' at the Royal Family by casting the stepdaughter of IRA supporter Roy Greenslade in the role of Countess Mountbatten.
Penny Junor said Natascha McElhone, 51, was not responsible for the 'sins of her stepfather'. But she said another actress should have been considered because of the role's sensitive nature.
Royal experts are demanding Prince Harry tears up his £112million Netflix deal and makes a stand over The Crown's portrayal of Princess Diana
Diana, Princess of Wales with Jemima Khan and her son on a British royal tour of Pakistan in 1997
The fifth season of The Crown, which will be released in November next year, focuses on Princess Diana's relationship with her sons and Prince Charles before her tragic death in a Paris car crash in 1997.
Critics have criticised the series over their portrayal of Princess Diana, played by actress Elizabeth Debicki, 31, in her final years.
Ingrid Seward, editor of Majesty Magazine, told the Sun: 'I don't think Harry gets it. I presume when he did the deal with Netflix he didn't think it through — but Meghan would have, she's not an idiot.
'He talked about The Crown during his bus interview with James Corden, so he's not totally oblivious.'
The comments come after Khan, 47, refused a writing credit in The Crown and backed out of the project because the show wasn't handling Diana's story as 'respectfully or compassionately' as she had hoped.
Khan was hired to advise writer Peter Morgan, 58, who she enjoyed a brief romance with from this January to February.
Morgan has since been reunited with his partner of four years Gillian Anderson, 53, who won an Emmy for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in The Crown, The Sunday Times reported.
Elizabeth Debicki, who is playing Diana in the fifth season of The Crown
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle signed a deal with the streaming service last year for their new production company to make documentaries, feature films, scripted shows and children's programming
Khan worked with Morgan from last September to this February, on stories such as Diana's relationships with heart surgeon Hasnat Khan and Dodi Fayed as well as her sensational BBC Panorama interview with Martin Bashir.
She added that she agreed to help write the fifth series when approached by Morgan, a long-time friend, in 2019 even though she hadn't publicly spoken about her past with Diana because she wanted her story to be 'portrayed accurately'.
She said she requested that her 'contributions be removed from the series' and declined a writing credit.
'It was really important to me that the final years of my friend's life be portrayed accurately and with compassion, as has not always happened in the past,' Miss Khan told The Sunday Times.
But once she realised the stories were being written in a way she did not agree with, Miss Khan decided to withdraw her support. She said: 'In 2019, Peter Morgan asked me to co-write on the fifth series of The Crown, particularly those episodes which concerned Princess Diana's last years before she died.
'After a great deal of thought, having never spoken publicly about any of this before, I decided to contribute. We worked together on the outline and scripts from September 2020 until February 2021.
'When our co-writing agreement was not honoured, and when I realised that particular storylines would not necessarily be told as respectfully or compassionately as I had hoped, I requested that all my contributions be removed from the series and I declined a credit.'
She and Morgan became a couple late last year after he split from actress Gillian Anderson, his partner of four years.
Miss Khan and Morgan broke up in February and he is said to have rekindled his on-off relationship with Miss Anderson, 53, who won an Emmy for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in The Crown.
A spokesman for the The Crown said: 'Jemima Khan has been a friend, fan and a vocal public supporter of The Crown since season one.
'She has been part of a wide network of well-informed and varied sources who have provided extensive background information to our writers and research team – providing context for the drama that is The Crown. She has never been contracted as a writer.'
Khan was associate editor of political magazine The New Statesman and was European editor-at-large for the US magazine Vanity Fair and now runs a film production company.
She has two sons – Suleiman, 24, and 21-year-old Kasim – from her marriage to former cricketer Imran Khan, now Pakistan's Prime Minister and Hasnat Khan's distant cousin. Diana visited them in Pakistan twice, in 1996 and 1997.
Jemima married Imran Khan in 1995 but they divorced nine years later. Diana visited the pair twice in 1996 and 1997
Diana with Imran and Jemima Khan in 1997. From last September to this February the film producer worked with Peter Morgan on stories such as Diana's relationships with heart surgeon Hasnat Khan and Dodi Fayed
Khan, pictured, said the series was not as 'compassionate' as she hoped it would be
The couple married in 1995 but divorced nine years later.
Since then, the daughter of the late tycoon James Goldsmith and socialite Lady Annabel Goldsmith has dated several high-profile men including Hugh Grant, Russell Brand and Shane Warne (ex of Liz Hurley).
Father-of-five Morgan was nominated for an Academy Award for his script for the 2006 film The Queen, starring Helen Mirren.
Margaret Thatcher portrayed by Gillian Anderson in series four of The Crown
Peter Morgan has gained critical acclaim as the writer behind Netflix hit The Crown (pictured in 2017)
His other screenwriting credits include the movies Frost/Nixon and The Damned United, as well as the acclaimed stage play The Audience.
In September shots captured in sunny southern Spain showed director Philip Martin on set of the highly anticipated fifth series of The Crown, which is thought to cover the Royal Family from the 1990s to 2003.
There were no official visits to Spain by the royals in the 1990s and it is thought that the crew could have been recreating scenes from when Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed visited St. Tropez together in 1997.
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