While Prince Harry’s memoir Spare broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest-selling non-fiction book earlier this year, Peter Morgan, the creator of Netflix’s critically acclaimed royal drama The Crown, has yet to read the book.
“I’ve not read a word of it. Not that I wouldn’t be interested,” Peter told Variety in a new interview. “But I didn’t want his voice to inhabit my thinking too much. I’ve got a lot of sympathy with him, a lot of sympathy. But I didn’t want to read his book.”
Harry will be depicted in the sixth and final season of The Crown. Princess Diana’s youngest son will be played by Fflyn Edwards in part one and Luther Ford in part two. Peter revealed to Variety, “I do little bits of dramatization of Harry but mainly only in relationship to William.”
The final season will also star Meg Bellamy as Kate Middleton, the now-Princess of Wales. Although “the beginnings” of William and Catherine’s royal fairytale will be covered in The Crown’s last season, Harry and Meghan Markle’s won’t be.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in 2020, Peter said, “Meghan and Harry are in the middle of their journey, and I don’t know what their journey is or how it will end. One wishes some happiness, but I’m much more comfortable writing about things that happened at least 20 years ago. I sort of have in my head a 20-year rule. That is enough time and enough distance to really understand something, to understand its role, to understand its position, to understand its relevance. Often things that appear absolutely wildly important today are instantly forgotten, and other things have a habit of sticking around and proving to be historically very relevant and long-lasting.”
He added, “I don’t know where in the scheme of things Prince Andrew or indeed Meghan Markle or Harry will ever appear. We won’t know, and you need time to stop something being journalistic. And so I don’t want to write about them because to write about them would instantly make it journalistic. And there are plenty of journalists already writing about them. To be a dramatist, I think you need perspective and you need to also allow for the opportunity for metaphor. Once something has a metaphorical possibility, it can then become interesting.”
Part 1 of The Crown’s sixth and final season premieres Nov. 16 on Netflix, followed by Part 2 on Dec. 14.