chronicler. As a kid, Morgan wasn’t even interested in the royal fam-
ily. “No, no, no,” he says. “It was a horrible mistake. I don’t know how
we’ve ended up here.”
Let us help. Morgan’s road to the Windsors began with 2003’s
Michael Sheen-starring TV movie The Deal, about the rise to power
of British prime minister Tony Blair. Fascinated by Blair, Morgan
then wrote 2006’s The Queen, which concerned Elizabeth’s sub-
dued reaction to the death of Princess Diana and the PM’s attempts
to prod Elizabeth into a show of mourning. Starring Sheen as Blair
and Helen Mirren as the Queen, the film was a box office hit that
won Mirren the Oscar and whetted Morgan’s appetite for another
palace-themed project. “I so enjoyed writing those
scenes between the Queen and Blair that I thought,
‘Well, I’ll do a play about those audiences, because she’s
had 13 prime ministers.” (Actually, that figure is now 14,
thanks to the recent ascent of Boris Johnson.) The
result, The Audience, opened in London in 2013 and
later transferred to Broadway, resulting in Mirren’s
Tony award. The Audience directly inspired The Crown,
which Morgan initially envisioned as a film exploring
the relationship between Elizabeth and Winston
Churchill before it evolved into its current form. “I