The Crown is getting ever closer to the modern age, its third and most recent season tracing Queen Elizabeth’s life from 1963 to 1977, with at least another season en route later this year, and perhaps another two after that. But however near it gets to the drama that’s plagued the royal family in the current era, there’s one story it definitely won’t touch: the much tabloidized marriage of Prince Harry and his Yank wife, Meghan Markle.
On the day the Duke and Duchess of Sussex shocked the world by saying they were planning to “step back as ‘senior’ members of the Royal Family,” Entertainment Weekly dug up an old quote in which he shot down the idea of turning the two into TV fodder.
“I know how my show is going to end — but that’s long before where we are now,” Morgan told EW back in December 2018, when the show’s third season was still being filmed. “I feel uncomfortable writing about events within a certain time period. I think there’s a certain amount of time within which, if you write about it, what you do instantly becomes journalistic. Because it’s too close to the moment.”
Morgan added that he likes to wait “fifteen or twenty years, basically a generation” before turning real life drama into onscreen drama. “Let’s wait twenty years and see what there is to say about Meghan Markle,” he said. “I don’t know what there is to say about Meghan Markle at the moment. I wouldn’t know and I wouldn’t presume. She’ll only become interesting once we’ve had twenty years to digest who she is and what her impact has been. If I were to write about Meghan Markle I would automatically be writing journalistically. I’ve got nothing to say about Meghan Markle.”
Surely Morgan didn’t mean to single out Markle, who in her brief reign as English monarchy has managed to inspire the American president to call her “nasty” then deny that he did, despite audio evidence to the contrary. But if we’re to believe he still believes these words — and it has been over a year since he said them — does this mean The Crown, when it finally does wrap up, will end around, say, 2005 or 2010? Either way, let’s hope current star Olivia Colman gets at least one more Emmy.
(Via EW)
