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‘Doesn't everyone in Britain know he had an affair?’ With those words about Prince Phillip, ‘The Crown’ creator Peter Morgan has prepared us for an explosive season two of Netflix’s £100 million costume drama about Britain’s longest reigning monarch.
Photo: Netflix
Morgan made the comments during a Royal Television Society event, answering a question about whether 'The Crown' would tackle rumours about Prince Philip's alleged affairs during the early years of his marriage to the Queen, denied by the royal family.
We know Prince Philip today as a 95-year-old duffer in tweed. But 'The Crown’ has showed another side to the Queen’s other half (brilliantly played by Matt Smith), portraying him as a bit of a playboy, with a roving eye, indulging in boozy lunches at his gentlemen’s club. Morgan has put the royal marriage firmly at the centre of ‘The Crown’. In season one we saw the Queen, who was just 25 when she was crowned, struggle to balance the demands of the new job with two small children and a handful of a husband. We've seen Prince Philip seething with resentment about giving up his career in the navy to become Mr Queen, humiliated by having to kneel in front of his wife at her coronation, and furious that the kids won't be given his surname.
The writer and broadcaster Gyles Brandreth, in a book about the royals, quoted Philip as making this denial about the rumours of affairs: ‘How could I? I’ve had a detective in my company, night and day, since 1947.’ Morgan was keeping shtum about plot details for season two, but he told the audience that it would cover the eight years between 1956 and 1964.