The Queen is a woman of limited intelligence who’d prefer to be looking after her dogs, says Crown writer
QUEEN Elizabeth is merely ‘a countryside woman of limited intelligence’, the writer of the hit royal drama The Crown has claimed.
Peter Morgan insisted the British monarch ‘would have much preferred looking after her dogs and breeding horses to being Queen’.
The screenwriter, known for his republican leanings, said he never would have predicted he would end up working on a show about the Royal Family.
‘If you had told me I would be doing this, I would have told you it was mad, hallucinogenic conjecture,’ he told the Sunday Times magazine.
‘I wouldn’t have guessed there would be anything more to say about this countryside woman of limited intelligence who would have much preferred looking after her dogs and breeding horses to being queen.’
He also likened the ‘insane system’ of the monarchy to a virus.
‘They’re survival organisms, like a mutating virus,’ he said.
‘Look at how many prime min- isters are wheeled out in coffins, on stretchers, having made fools of themselves – Downing Street is full of sick people. And yet she [the Queen] survives. It is clearly a deranged institution and a completely insane system, but perhaps it’s the insanity that makes it work.’
The Crown won a Golden Globe for best TV series, with awards for Claire Foy, who played the Queen, and John Lithgow, who was Winston Churchill.
The first series followed the Queen and Prince Philip before and after her coronation, charting their transition into life at Buckingham Palace.
Ms Foy, 33, and Matt Smith, 35 – who plays the young Philip – will return for the second series, which will be set between 1957 and 1964.
Beginning on December 8, it will include episodes featuring President John F Kennedy and his wife Jackie.
Mr Morgan said the show’s success was down to him being ‘blessed with the richness of the history of the second half of the 20th century’.
He added: ‘I’m also blessed because the system she [the Queen] is in is so ridiculous and illogical that even just to unpack it from a point of view of reason or logic is such a joy. And that’s why I do what I do and I’ll keep on doing it until they stop me.’
Olivia Colman, the star of Broadchurch and The Night Manager, is to take over the role of Queen from Ms Foy in the series, which airs on Netflix.
She has said of her forthcoming involvement in the drama: ‘I’m so thrilled to be part of The Crown. I was utterly gripped watching it.’