Netflix's hit royal drama, The Crown, turned a blind eye to Prince Harry's polarizing memoir revelations when preparing for its final season, the show's award-winning hair and makeup designer told Newsweek.
The Crown will air its final season in two installments. The first part, released on November 16, will cover the final days in the life of Princess Diana (played by Elizabeth Debicki) and the aftermath of her tragic death.
The series has courted controversy since its debut in 2016 and has attracted the attention of a number of real life royals, including Diana's younger son, Harry, who has stated publicly that he fact checks the storylines when they air.
The prince wrote at length about his childhood with his mother and wider family relationships in his January 2023 memoir Spare, making a number of personal revelations that earned him criticism and, in one particular case, ridicule.
His inclusion of an account of developing penile frostbite on a North Pole trek in 2011 was widely spoofed at the time of the book's release, compounded by the additional information that he had used Princess Diana's favorite Elizabeth Arden lip cream as a home remedy on the affected area.
The account was joked about on late night shows and on social media, with a London-based book editor describing it as a "Freudian nightmare."
Though this anecdote was one of the standout lines from Spare, it did not influence The Crown creatives as they prepared to shoot their final season.
Speaking to Newsweek ahead of the sixth season's release, the hair and makeup designer for the show, Cate Hall, revealed that she didn't make any changes to her preparations as a result of Harry's book.
Asked whether she had added in a new lip cream to actress Elizabeth Debicki's makeup kit while filming the show based on the prince's memoir revelation, Hall responded that she had not.
"I have not read Spare, I'm afraid," she explained, adding that Diana's makeup bag was "enormous" with an "abundance of different lip products and several lip balms but no, I didn't reference Spare in my research."
The decision not to creatively use Spare as a resource or reference point is something that has been echoed by The Crown's writer and creator, Peter Morgan, who ahead of Season 6 said he didn't wish to be influenced by Harry's perspective on events covered in the show.
"I've not read a word of it. Not that I wouldn't be interested," he told Variety. "But I didn't want his voice to inhabit my thinking too much. I've got a lot of sympathy with him, a lot of sympathy. But I didn't want to read his book."
Harry appeared for the first time as a character in the show's fourth season and in the upcoming installments of the drama he will be played by actors Fflyn Edwards (in part one) and Luther Ford (in part two).
The show will cover events until 2005 in the public and private lives of Queen Elizabeth II and her family, and is expected to close its timeline soon after the marriage of Prince Charles (Dominic West) and Camilla Parker Bowles (Olivia Williams).
Buckingham Palace hasn't commented on the series, in the same way as it hasn't commented on Harry's Spare or the revelations made within it.
The Crown Season 6 will be released in two installments, on November 16 and December 14, on Netflix.
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We'd love to hear from you.
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About the writer
James Crawford-Smith is a Newsweek Royal Reporter, based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on the British royal family ... Read more
