Princess Diana's Friend Jemima Khan Quits The Crown Over Disrespectful Storyline

Jemima Khan, a close friend of Princess Diana, a former journalist and the ex-wife of Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan, has quit Netflix’s The Crown. She was working as a consultant for the upcoming fifth season of the series. Jemima quit as she was unhappy with the handling of the storyline and the way Diana was being portrayed. Speaking to The Sunday Times, via Us Weekly, Jemima said “It was really important to me that the final years of my friend’s life be portrayed accurately and with compassion, as has not always happened in the past.”

She continued, “In 2019, [creator] Peter Morgan asked me to cowrite on the fifth series of The Crown, particularly those episodes which concerned Princess Diana’s last years before she died. After a great deal of thought, having never spoken publicly about any of this before, I decided to contribute.”

Jemima worked on “the outline and scripts from September 2020 until February 2021” but said that she's since pulled out—and requested that her contributions be removed. 

However, Netflix has released a statement denying that Jemima was ever a writer on the show: “Jemima Khan has been a friend, fan, and a vocal public supporter of The Crown since season 1. She has been part of a wide network of well-informed and varied sources who have provided extensive background information to our writers and research team—providing context for the drama that is The Crown. She has never been contracted as a writer on the series.”