The Crown will feature the infamous BBC interview involving Princess Diana and Martin Bashir in the upcoming fifth season despite Prince William saying that he hopes there will be no more airing or references to the said chat.
Sources revealed that The Crown creator Peter Morgan wants the Panorama interview recreated and has finished the script after working closely with a team of researchers and writers. They've actually completed writing in 2020 with the Diana-Bashir incident taking more than one episode and it will delve on how Bashir "groomed" Diana to be able to open up to him and reveal shocking details about her marriage to Prince Charles.
Diana will be played by Elizabeth Debicki, whose casting was announced before the premiere of the fourth season in 2019, while Charles will allegedly feature Dominic West. The Netflix series, however, has yet to announce who will play Bashir.
The fifth season will cover the period in the early 1990s until Diana's death in 1997. Morgan has planned a sixth and final season that will likely culminate in the early 2000s, or the queen's 50th year of reign.
But in early May, William, the eldest son of Diana and Charles, denounced the Panorama interview after an investigation showed that Bashir demonstrated deceitful conduct in securing Diana's agreement to have the interview. William said in a strong statement that the interview, including the ones that depicted it over the years, has no legitimacy and should never be made to air.
It's unclear, however, if The Crown writers will make changes to the season 5 script after this latest development. There are speculations that the show could include how Bashir forged documents to convince Diana that someone in her staff was being paid off to inform on Buckingham Palace.
The Crown adviser Andrew Morton, on the other hand, said that there will be a storyline involving Diana's secret recordings about her life to deliver to Morton. He is credited for writing the bestselling book, Diana: Her True Story, which is almost close to being autobiographical as it had the princess' consent and cooperation. Morton also said that he's just waiting to find out which actor will play his character.
The Netflix royal drama series will start filming the fifth season in London in the summer and it will be a back-to-back production for the sixth season. The streaming platform, however, has not announced when The Crown season 5 premiere but given the work's timeline, the show could have fresh new episodes by the end of 2022.
