The creators of The Crown talk about Meghan Markle and Princess Diana's similarities

'When you see a beautiful young princess struggling to find love and acceptance within the family, the parallels are obvious and the parallels write themselves'

Season four of The Crown may have left our screens but we're still talking about it, with the fourth season seeing Olivia Coleman, Tobias Menzies, Josh O’Connor and Erin Doherty reprising their roles.

Also joining the cast for season 4 were Gillian Anderson as Margaret Thatcher and Emma Corrin as Princess Diana.

The Princess Diana storyline made headlines in particular, with many comparing the late Princess of Wales to Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle.

This is something that The Crown’s creator Peter Morgan opened up about in an interview with Vanity Fair, ahead of the fourth season’s release, explaining that the two women have a lot in common.

‘When you see a beautiful young princess struggling to find love and acceptance within the family, the parallels are obvious and the parallels write themselves,’ Peter Morgan told Vanity Fair. ‘If you come into the royal family with any agenda for yourself — or if you come in and connect with the public in a way that threatens to change the way that the royal family connects with the public —that’s something that doesn’t particularly sit comfortably for either side.’

He continued: ‘Really, the only version of events that works is if somebody comes in and becomes invisible, and just sort of knuckles down to a lifetime of agreeable supplicancy to the duties of the crown. Diana struggled to fit in with the institution in a way that it’s impossible not to see the parallels with Meghan Markle and Harry. So the story feels both incredibly vivid historically, but also it really shines a lot of lights on where we are now.’

All four seasons of The Crown are available on Netflix.