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The Crown wrapped its sixth and final season on Netflix, but one of the show’s researchers, Annie Sulzberger, revealed that the show might have looked very different if Prince Harry had published his memoir, Spare, earlier. The book was released on Jan. 10, 2023, and it was just too late to include some of the jaw-dropping detailsthe royal family member made public.
She explained to The Telegraph, “There were nice details in there that I think were useful and, had we got it a year earlier, maybe it would have made more of a difference. It was very interesting to read and to be able to get his insider understanding of his experiences within the family at a time, but it didn’t affect us enormously in the end.” Filming began for the final season in early September 2022 and wrapped in April 2023 which means that the scripts for the 10 episodes were written far ahead of the production schedule.
One area where the producers used Prince Harry’s insight was during the Club H scene at Prince Charles’ Highgrove estate. “It came out in time for some of the episodes where we show the Highgrove party and H Club, we were able to get a little bit of a sense of like ‘Oh, it’s in a basement and there’s a light’ and those sorts of things,” Sulzberger noted. The Crown also found itself in “tricky territory” because their version of events around Harry’s decision to wear a Nazi costume differs from his side of the story.
The show had Kate Middleton expressing her concern about the sensitive nature of the costume while the Duke of Sussex’s memoir claimed a very different story. He wrote that Prince William and Kate encouraged him to go to the “Native and Colonial” party in 2005 as a Nazi. “They both howled,” Harry recalled in his book. “‘Worse than Willy’s leotard outfit! Way more ridiculous!’ Which, again, was the point.”
Sulzberger took a diplomatic approach to how the show handled the sensitive moment. “To go through that kind of emotional upheaval that he has gone through is going to affect everything,” she said. “That is not to say that his version of what happened in that costume shop didn’t happen, but it is just to say that it’s tricky territory.”
With The Crown wrapping just as William and Kate begin their courtship and both sons navigating their relationship with their dad after Princess Diana’s death, Spare feels ripe for the picking if a streaming network wants to do a scripted version of Harry’s book. But right now, it feels too soon to revisit some of the royal family’s most painful moments of the modern era.
Before you go, click here to see all the wild and heartbreaking details from Prince Harry’s memoir Spare.
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