Crown showrunner Peter Morgan recapped the series’ final season during Netflix’s FYSEE event on Monday, touching on how the death of Queen Elizabeth affected his desire to continue the series.
In a conversation with Los Angeles Times critic Robert Abele Morgan noted that he always thought of the show “as a story about two houses, Buckingham Palace and Downing Street, and I never really thought of it as about the royal family. But of course everyone only thinks about this, the royal family, while I think it’s about both houses.
Admitting: “This is going to sound crazy, but I’m not really interested in the monarchy,” Morgan continued: “Mothers, sons, wives, husbands, that’s really what it’s all about. And of course there is this woman at heart, this rather extraordinary woman. And for me, at the time of her death, I guess from that point on I didn’t really want to do it anymore because it was really about her too.
Queen Elizabeth died in September 2022 in Season 5 Crown released in November 2022, with Season 6 in November and December 2023. The writer noted that when creating the series a decade ago, he initially thought there might be three seasons – a younger queen, a middle-aged queen, and an older queen – but “ I realized pretty quickly that it was impossible to tell the story properly in such a compact amount of time.”
He also talked about making recent history in the last two seasons, saying: “I have a rule that will never, ever, ever come in a decade. But then I doubled it Crown — a decade and another decade for good measure. Because for me it’s a generation.”
Morgan noted that Princess Diana’s death in particular seems like it happened yesterday and cast doubt on his two-decade reign. “On one hand I thought everything was fine, the death happened in 1997, now it’s 2024. That’s more than one generation,” he said, “but when the show came out, I felt like we really had to be really careful, really gentle ” because of its worldwide impact and the emotions that come with it.
Of the decision to end the series with Charles and Camilla’s wedding in 2005, Morgan said: “That ending came to me very early on. “I always knew I wanted to retire with at least 15 or 20 years,” and gave the Queen “a moment where she could really think deeply about whether she should continue her career or not.”
