I am relieved The Crown is over, says creator

The Crown’s creator has said he is “relieved” the long-running show has come to an end as the sixth season is released.

Peter Morgan, who wrote the award-winning Netflix drama about the Royal family, said that he thinks “it was time” the show came to an end.

Asked how he felt ahead of the release of the final series after 10 years of working on it, he said: “I don’t entirely know yet, but pretty relieved. I mean, positively, relieved.”

Speaking on The Crown’s official podcast, released on Thursday to mark the new season, he said: “You know, like when people say, ‘What’s the difference between good pain and bad pain?’ I feel good pain.”

He added: “I’m probably not sad that we’ve reached the end. I think it was time.”

The British screenwriter, 60, said that he had achieved exactly what he set out to do in making the series, which has won seven Golden Globes since it debuted on Netflix in November 2016.

Speaking to the podcast host Edith Bowman, he said: “I’m sort of stunned…we did exactly what we said we were going to do, and we got to the end somehow.

“Making a show like this is tough in so many different ways, but I think this is as harmonious and as co-operative a group of people that could go for a decade.”

The sixth and final series, which will be split into two parts, will chronicle events in the Royal family from 1997 until 2005, including the relationship between Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed, their fatal car crash in Paris, the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, and Prince William and Catherine’s courtship at St Andrews.

Morgan said that his intention was always to end the series “as close to 20 years away from present day” as he could, so that there would be “distance and so that it would feel historical rather than journalistic”.

The writer, who previously said he has never worked on anything that had caused such a public furore, added that the Queen’s death last September presented him with “structural challenges” from a writing point of view, but that he knew he did not want another season.

He said it was a “cerebral structural challenge” to find a natural ending to the show, which is expected to end on “a very big high” with the 2005 wedding of Charles and Camilla, according to Netflix sources.

Elsewhere on the podcast, Imelda Staunton, who plays the late Queen in seasons five and six of The Crown, said that she was “absolutely inconsolable” when the news of Elizabeth II’s death came as they were filming.

She said: “When we were filming that day, I remember, and I came home and I was absolutely inconsolable and more.

“And that sort of – it shocked me, my reaction, and I mean, I’ve always felt very, extremely responsible playing it, but I then witnessed over those 10 days and witnessed at her funeral why so many people are affected by this, because I just feel that she – whether you like the monarchy or don’t like the monarchy – this woman turned up every day.”

The new series of the hit show will also see Charles grappling with the death of Diana – who appears as a ghost at one point – and the wave of negative public opinion about the monarchy in the wake of the tragedy.

The first four episodes will be released on Nov 16, with the second batch following on Dec 14.