Yesterday, the Telegraph tried to make the premiere of The Crown’s Season 6 all about Prince Harry. No matter how many times Harry says that he really doesn’t care and he has nothing to do with The Crown, people still try to attach him to the show or make it sound like he’s secretly providing scripts or what have you. Harry has said he’s watched some of it – probably the early seasons – but there’s no indication that he’s watched more recent episodes. This is what the Telegraph’s Victoria Ward reported:

The Duke of Sussex is expected to watch his final conversation with his mother dramatised in the final series of The Crown, but his brother, the Prince of Wales, will not tune in. The first four episodes of the sixth series will strike a devastatingly personal note for both Princes William and Harry, being almost wholly concerned with Diana, Princess of Wales’s final weeks, her death and its immediate aftermath. The drama depicts the final time Diana saw her sons and imagines their final conversation on the telephone.

Despite the decision by writer Peter Morgan to devote the best part of four episodes to the build up and aftermath of the tragedy, Harry is still likely to watch the show. Prince Harry, 39, has admitted that he watches and fact checks the Netflix series.

However, one source close to him said they may watch it first in order to save him from anything he may not wish to see.

His elder brother, meanwhile, has never watched it and is not expected to watch this series, sources close to him confirm. Prince William was also said to have been “frustrated” that the show raked over the circumstances surrounding his mother’s Panorama interview with the disgraced BBC journalist Martin Bashir, which he has said holds no legitimacy and should never be aired again. Some close to him have expressed surprise that The Crown has edged so far towards the present day, depicting events that many acutely remember.

[From The Telegraph]

The stuff about William having never watched it is a blatant lie – all of the royals watched the early seasons and they had really positive things to say about Matt Smith and Claire Foy’s performances. The problems only began for the royals when the show entered the Diana years. Suddenly, they despised the show and wanted everyone to know that the whole thing was fiction! Well, anyway, would it surprise you to know that the Telegraph has zero knowledge of what Harry thinks about the Crown?

Prince Harry has distanced himself from a report that claimed he would watch his mother’s last moments in the final season of The Crown on Netflix.

A source close to the Duke of Sussex told Deadline that he would not stream the final season of Peter Morgan’s show due to the “sensitive nature” of its content.

Deadline understands that Prince Harry has no ill feelings towards The Crown’s creators or Netflix about the direction of Season 6. He was not consulted over the show and had no advanced sight of episodes.

Earlier on Thursday, The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that Prince Harry would be tuning in having viewed previous seasons of The Crown.

[From Deadline]

I’m sure there will be Sussex squad folks screaming about not believing unnamed sources in either direction, but my guess is that Harry didn’t believe the Telegraph’s false report rose to the level of denying something on the record, so he had some Archewell comms person send a quick email denial to a trade paper and there you go. The fact that Deadline reported this is fascinating to me too – it shows that Harry is perfectly capable of using the American media as a way to fact-check the lies in the British media.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Netflix.