Prince Harry’s Spare is one of the world’s best-selling books — but The Crown’s creator says he hasn’t read a page of it, and he has a good reason for his decision.
According to People, Peter Morgan said that he didn’t consult the best-selling book because he didn’t want the Duke of Sussex’s “voice” to taint the vision of the monarchy that he had in his head.
“I’ve not read a word of it,” he said. “Not that I wouldn’t be interested. But I didn’t want his voice to inhabit my thinking too much. I’ve got a lot of sympathy with him, a lot of sympathy. But I didn’t want to read his book.”
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A young Prince Harry does, indeed, appear in the final season of the hit Netflix show.
However, Morgan said that his depiction of the Invictus Games founder is only shown “in relationship to his older brother, Prince William.”
Morgan also said that the true focus of The Crown is only on the main line of the heirs of the British throne — that is, Queen Elizabeth II, King Charles, and now, Prince William — which is why the Duke of Sussex only has a minor, tangential role.
That decision doesn’t seem to bother Prince Harry too much, either, as he — and his wife, Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex — have called the show “fiction.”
“They don’t pretend to be news. It’s fiction. But it’s loosely based on the truth. Of course, it’s not strictly accurate,” the Prince told James Corden back in 2021.
“It gives you a rough idea about what that lifestyle, what the pressures of putting duty and service above family and everything else, what can come from that.”
“I’m way more comfortable with The Crown than I am seeing the stories written about my family, or my wife, or myself. That is obviously fiction – take it how you will. But this is being reported on as fact because you’re supposedly news,” he said.
