Andrew Morton says new season of The Crown is ‘like being in the room with Diana’

Royal biographer secretly interviewed the Princess of Wales for his 1992 book

Royal biographer Andrew Morton has said the fifth season of Netflix’s The Crown is “like being in a room with Diana”.

Morton secretly interviewed Diana, Princess of Wales with her cooperation in the early Nineties through a series of tape recordings.

He then used these recordings to write his 1992 book, Diana: Her True Story - In Her Own Words.

Speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Wednesday (9 November), Morton told hosts Ed Balls and Susanna Reid that he’d watched the first few minutes of episode two, the one Morton is depicted in, and said he’s “deeply shocked”.

“It was like being in the room with Diana,” Morton explained. “Elizabeth Debicki and her portrayal of Diana was astonishing. I don’t say this lightly, but that performance really conveys the Diana that I got to know for a couple of years in the early 1990s.”

Morton added that actor Debicki, who portrays the late princess in season five,  has “done a Golden Globe worth of acting there”.

When asked by Reid how viewers can distinguish what is fact and what is fiction, Morton said that while it’s a drama and liberties are taken, the “attention to detail is astonishing”.

Andrew Morton (left) in 2017, and Diana, Princess of Wales (right) in 1992 (Getty)

“I was struck watching the episode about me,” he added. “About how the paper that I typed the book on was the same paper. The typeface was the same. The attention to detail was astounding. I’m really quite blown away by it.”

Morton added that the 1990s were a “difficult period” for the royal family and that there was “no getting away from that”.

Of his book, he said that it empowered Diana and “gave her control of the narrative for the first time in her life”.

“When I was first dealing with her, she was quite desperate to get her story out, to the point where she thought the book could be written and published within a week,” he added. “It showed how desperate she was to convey her message to the wider world.”

The Crown season five is now streaming on Netflix.