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Princess Diana’s life, of course, has always been the stuff that soap opera fodder is made of. But usually, that “fodder” has been given the “prestige drama” treatment. Most recently, in a movie format with Kristen Stewart playing the part of Diana in Pablo Larraín’s 2021 film, Spencer. But at least Larraín had the good sense to commence his movie with the warning, “A fable from a true tragedy.” Because, in effect, that’s what any attempt to make a film or show about Diana’s life (particularly her “later years”) is. That has become increasingly true with products like The Crown, which seem to enjoy an especial emphasis on who/“what” she was during the brief period when she was officially divorced from Prince Charles. Sadly, Diana scarcely got to experience a full year as a free woman before the car crash that would take her life.
The first part of The Crown’s sixth season (because, unfortunately, they want to drag it out in two parts) wastes no time in commencing with the tragedy right away, for viewers are made to understand that it’s August 31, 1997 with the opening shot trained on the Eiffel Tower—this after panning upward from a man leaving his apartment to walk his dog. It is this man who will serve as the anchor for the crash scene, with his literal “man on the street” perspective serving to highlight that, even if Diana were an “ordinary mortal” (which she technically was after being stripped of her royal title), this “incident” would have been regarded with shock and outrage. Which is precisely how the dog-walking man views it when he calls emergency services to report the crash. Though the audience already knows how it all built up to this senseless moment, writer and show creator Peter Morgan wants to take us through the usual structural rigmarole that goes hand in hand with Diana: starting with her death and then “taking us back” to the moments before it all went so horribly awry.
Having already written about this death with a better angle in 2006, when he received acclaim for The Queen’s screenplay (complete with an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay), Morgan is beating a dead horse in more ways than one with this rehashing. And perhaps trying to make season six as “different” as possible from the way he told the story of her death in The Queen. Well, that it certainly is…most notably in using the ultra-cheesy trope of wielding “Diana’s ghost” (though Morgan insists, “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…”) to help give closure to the ones who were the biggest assholes to her: Elizabeth and Charles. Obviously, in the former’s case, Morgan wants to show respect for a dead royal, and, in the latter’s case, doesn’t want to ruffle the feathers of a king by presenting him as having blood on his hands. Instead, Diana consistently comes across as the trainwreck, the one who “did it to herself” in the end. This much is underscored at every turn throughout all four episodes of season six’s “part one.” Even in little details where Morgan can take more creative license with dialogue that paints Diana as “addicted to drama.”
In fact, there’s a scene of her on the horn with her therapist, Susie Orbach (the name of Diana’s real-life shrink), just so we can witness Morgan-as-Orbach chastising her with the lines, “Let’s face it, this [relationship with Dodi] is just drama again. Drama is adrenaline. Addictive. And in many ways, the opposite of adult behavior.” Referring to her latest “boyfriend,” a still-engaged (as far as his fiancée, Kelly Fisher, was concerned) Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla), Orbach wants, like so many others in the Royal Family, for Diana to stop being, well, “so dramatic.” Not only that, but to stop courting the drama that already surrounds her without her “trying” to cultivate more. It’s a take on the People’s Princess that isn’t exactly new (in addition to billing her as someone with persecutory delusions). But it is one that feels increasingly in poor taste amid a more theoretically “modern” climate. One in which it’s no longer acceptable to paint women as the villains who “asked for it.” And that is often how Diana comes across in this final season.
Which is why something about Morgan’s representation of Diana and the circumstances leading up to her death feel more than somewhat fishy. As though The Crown itself paid him off to keep the narrative of Diana’s inevitable self-destruction going. And with Charles as the current monarch, his “dashing” portrayal is suspiciously over-the-top. This includes Diana’s specter informing him on his private plane, “Thank you for how you were in the hospital. So raw, broken…and handsome.” Cue vomiting here (no allusion to Diana’s bulimia intended). And yeah, what about that scene in the hospital of Charles? The one where he’s wailing over her body so that everyone else in the building can hear it. As if. Not only because Charles himself simply wasn’t that way, but because of the old British adage about always maintaining a “stiff upper lip,” most especially in public. Therefore, Morgan’s additional very “creative” (read: ass-kissing) license with this scene seems to indicate his further not-so-coincidental affection for the new king of late. For, as Morgan himself commented in an interview with Variety about season six, “I probably am a monarchist, but out of appreciation for what they do when they do it well. I think if we’re all adults, we would say that the system makes no sense and is unjust in the modern democracy. But I’m not sure Britain would be Britain without a monarchy.” Ah, one of those. A man who would sooner imagine the end of Britain than the end of its monarchy. We’ll see where that takes the country in the years to come…
And so, as a self-proclaimed royalist (where once he claimed not to be), that sentiment of Morgan’s has been rather apparent throughout The Crown, as the show mutated into an evermore royal puff piece, particularly toward Charles in the episodes that aired leading up to his real-life coronation. This extended in casting someone much better-looking (Dominic West) in season five and season six to play him, as well as portraying him as someone with viable breakdancing moves in “The Way Ahead.” In the actual footage, Charles looks far less at home on the dance floor among what The Crown title card calls “disadvantaged youths” (that’s polite Queen’s English for “Black people”). Indeed, where Charles’ charity work is made to appear dignified in the series, Diana’s is eventually made to appear as yet another manifestation of her attention-seeking love for spectacle. This angle, spun by Morgan, is apparent when her relationship with Fayed becomes more central to her press conference in Bosnia about landmines than the victims of the landmines themselves (this, by the way, is another fictionalization on Morgan’s part, as the photo of “the kiss” between her and Fayed wasn’t printed until after that conference). As though, again, it’s somehow Diana’s doing that this is the reaction to her. As though, in the end, she “sought it out” with her behavior. Her “recklessness”—not just in general, but in matters of love. Yet it was clear there wasn’t any real “love” between her and Fayed. Or at least, that’s how The Crown paints it, with Fayed’s interest in her largely driven by his father’s pressure to “acquire” her like another British asset for their portfolio.
As we all know without watching The Crown, that “acquisition” didn’t happen. Nor did the proposal Dodi botched in a room at The Ritz-Carlton, with all signs pointing to the fact that Dodi would not have proposed in the hotel before they headed back to his place on the night of their death. In truth, the only “accuracy” about their relationship appears to be the idea that they were both “using each other” for various reasons. And yes, in all likelihood, things probably wouldn’t have lasted romantically between them. If one can even call what they had a “true romance” as opposed to just a “bad” one (if for no other reason than being perpetually hounded by paparazzi, as Fayed was painted in the press as an “ill-advised choice” [to put it as non-racistly as possible on behalf of the Brits] for Diana).
With part two of the season set to refocus more on Elizabeth and Charles (yawn), there are also reports that the fallout from Diana’s death in terms of how it affects William and Harry will be a factor as well. Whatever the case, it’s surely got to beat seeing, once again, the reductive bastardization of Diana’s final years. Something that has never quite been “warmly received” by those who revere the princess (one such other example being 2013’s simply-titled Diana starring Naomi Watts in the titular role). Least of all when she’s presented as some kind of ghost with predilections for blowing smoke up the Royal Family’s ass…which, of course, was never her style.
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Genna Rivieccio
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