CUTTING TIES

Diana’s Friend Leaves ‘The Crown’ After Blasting Storyline as Disrespectful

Jemima Khan said she left after realizing the story was not going to be told “as respectfully or compassionately as I had hoped.”

A close friend of the late Princess Diana has said she backed out of contributing to the upcoming season of The Crown after realizing the story was not going to be told “as respectfully or compassionately” as she’d hoped. British television producer Jemima Khan told The Sunday Times that she’d joined the project because “it was really important to me that the final years of my friend’s life be portrayed accurately and with compassion, as has not always happened in the past.”

The Crown’s fifth season will cover the years leading up to Diana’s death in 1997. Khan asked for her contributions to the show’s fifth season to be yanked, she said, “when our cowriting agreement was not honoured, and when I realized that particular story line would not necessarily be told as respectfully or compassionately as I had hoped.”

Khan told the Times that the Netflix show’s creator, Peter Morgan, had asked her to consult on the season in 2019. The two became a couple a short time later, and worked “together on the outline and scripts from September 2020 until February 2021.” Khan and Morgan broke up earlier this year.