The final phone call between Princess Diana and her boys, Harry and William, was featured in the newest season of The Crown, although some liberties were used.
The Netflix series’ sixth and final season premiered today, with Imelda Staunton reprising her role as Queen Elizabeth II, Dominic Cooper as Prince Charles, and Elizabeth Debicki as the Princess of Wales.
It will include major events such as Tony Blair’s presidency, Diana, Princess of Wales’ death, Prince William and Kate Middleton’s early romance, and Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles’ wedding.
The play has come under fire for focusing on specific parts of Diana’s death, and although some details are historically correct, one had to be made up.
Diana is seen on the phone with her boys, who are staying in Balmoral, in the third episode.
Meanwhile, she is in Paris, where she communicates with the guys from her hotel room.
William tells his mother that they don’t have much time to talk and that they’re going to have supper.
During the conversation, she asks her son how ‘cold and damp’ Scotland is and is surprised by her eldest son’s revelation that he went hunting that day and shot a deer.
‘Oh I can’t bear it,’ she exclaims.
Then, picking up the phone, Harry asks her when she will return to England and if she is still with the ‘poser,’ alluding to Dodi (Khalid Abdalla).
Taking aim at his mother’s partner, William then makes a joke about Dodi wearing moccasins and “always being on the phone.”
Dodi continues to chat with her boys, who wonder if she wants to marry again while he prepares his proposal to Diana.
William asks his mother directly, determined to receive an answer from her.
‘Mummy, are you going to marry Dodi,’ he asks, to which she responds no and asks about the reason for his line of questioning.
‘Well, all the newspapers say you are,’ he says.
She continues: ‘Well you know better than to believe the papers. I am emphatically not going to marry Dodi. Honestly, I can’t wait to come home.’
Their final exchange sees Diana saying she ‘doesn’t understand’ how she’s ended up where she is and how she ‘needs to make changes’ to her life.
Diana bids her final farewell and tells her sons how much she loves them before they hang up.
Despite this heartfelt conversation, it is far from what actually occurred.
Last year, on the 25th anniversary of their mother’s death, Princes William and Harry discussed the events of their last phone contact with their mother before she died in a vehicle accident in 1997.
The princes, who were aged 15 and 12 at the time of her death, described being at Balmoral with their extended family when they got a phone call from Princess Diana in Paris.
They went on to express their sorrow for rushing to get off the phone, unaware that it would be their final chat.
‘At the time Harry and I were running around minding our own business, you know, playing with our cousins and having a very good time,’ Prince William explained in an ITV documentary.
‘I think Harry and I were just in a desperate rush to say goodbye, you know, see you later and we’re going to go off.
‘If I’d known now obviously what was going to happen, I wouldn’t have been so blasé about it and everything else. But that phone call sticks in my mind quite, quite heavily.’
His brother then explained how, as a kid, he ‘never enjoyed speaking to my parents on the phone,’.
‘And we spent far too much time speaking on the phone rather than speaking to each other, because of just the way the situation was.’
Prince William previously told The Telegraph he ‘can’t necessarily remember’ what he said in that last call with his mother, but that he will ‘regret for the rest of my life how short the phone call was’.
‘Looking back on it now, it’s incredibly hard. I have to sort of deal with that for the rest of my life.’
Last year official spokesperson for The Crown told Metro.co.uk: ‘We’ve always made it clear that The Crown is a fictional drama inspired by real events.’
Around the same time, a disclaimer explaining the dramatisation of the story was added to episodes.
The Crown season 6 will be released on Netflix in two parts, on November 16 and on December 14.
