The final phone call between Princess Diana and sons Harry and William has been included in the latest season of The Crown, however some liberties have been taken.
The sixth and final season of the Netflix series hit screens today, with Imelda Staunton returning as Queen Elizabeth II, in addition to Dominic Cooper as Prince Charles and Elizabeth Debicki as the Princess of Wales.
It will feature notable events including the premiership of Tony Blair, the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, the early relationship of Prince William and Kate Middleton, and the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.
The decision to focus on certain aspects of Diana’s death has seen the show come under fire and while some details are historically accurate, one had to be made up.
In the third episode, Diana is seen on the phone to her sons who are staying at Balmoral.
Meanwhile she is in Paris and speaks to the boys from her hotel room.
Alerting his mother that they don’t have long to speak, William explains how they are about to have dinner.
During the chat, she asks her son how ‘cold and wet’ Scotland is and seems shocked by her eldest son’s admission that he went hunting and shot a stag that day.
‘Oh I can’t bear it,’ she exclaims.
Then grabbing the phone, Harry asks her when they can expect her home in England and asks if she is still with the ‘poser’, referring to Dodi (Khalid Abdalla).
Taking aim at his mother’s boyfriend, William then jokes about Dodi wearing moccasins and ‘being on the phone all the time’.
As Dodi is preparing his proposal to Diana, she continues to speak to her sons, who ask her whether she has plans to get married again.
Determined to get an answer out of his mother, William asks her directly.
‘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.
Before they hang up, Diana says her final goodbye and tells her sons how much she loves them.
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 spoke about the details of their last phone call with their mother before she was killed in a car crash in 1997.
The princes, only 15 and 12 at the time of her death, explained how they were at Balmoral with their extended family when they received a phone call from Princess Diana in Paris.
They went on to talk about their regret at hurrying to get off the phone, not knowing it would be their last conversation.
‘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 was also added to episodes outlining the dramatisation of the story.
The Crown season 6 will be released on Netflix in two parts, on November 16 and on December 14.
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