Harry 'taking extreme measure' to protect himself before watching The Crown

16 November 2023 , 11:48

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Prince Harry will tune into The Crown, but only after friends have watched it first and carried out sensitivity checks

Prince Harry will reportedly watch the final season of The Crown – but only after friends have scoured the show to make sure nothing will traumatise him.

Netflix ’s controversial royal drama returns for its sixth and concluding chapter today, and is set to reopen old wounds. The first four episodes will present a dramatised version of the lead-up to and aftermath of the tragic death of Diana, Princess of Wales, who was killed, alongside boyfriend Dodi Al-Fayed and driver Henri Paul, in a high-speed car chase in Paris on August 31, 1997.

A friend of the 39-year-old Prince, who has admitted to watching the series in the past, claimed he would be tuning in for the swansong outing.

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(Netflix)

However, the same source told The Telegraph that they’d carry out a sensitivity check first to ensure it won’t deeply upset him. Estranged brother Prince William is unlikely to tune in, having previously expressed his frustration over how The Crown glossed over the circumstances surrounding Diana’s headline-hitting Panorama interview during their reenactment of it.

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Newly released clips revisit the last conversation that Diana, played by Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki, had with her sons before tragedy struck. In 2017 documentary Diana: Our Mother, the Princes shared some of the details of the phone call with their beloved mum.

“I can’t really, necessarily, remember what I said. But all I do remember is probably, you know, regretting for the rest of my life how short the phone call was,” Harry recalled. “And if I’d known that was the last time I was going to speak to my mother – the things I would have said to her.” William added: “Harry and I were in a desperate to rush to say goodbye, you know, ‘See you later.’”

The exact moment of Diana’s passing won’t be recreated – but there are scenes where then-Prince Charles, portrayed by Dominic West, converses with an imaginary Diana in the cabin of the royal plane, as he accompanies her body from Paris to London, and later when she appears to the Queen.

Some critics have condemned the “farcical” sequences, but creator Peter Morgan stood by his intention behind them, telling Variety: “I never imagined it as Diana’s ghost in the traditional sense. It was her continuing to live vividly in the minds of those she has left behind.”

Thomas Stichbury