Diana’s final farewell, as seen on The Crown
HIS head bowed in unspeakable grief, Prince William walks alongside the Duke of Edinburgh in the procession of mourners behind the coffin of his mother.
This is Netflix’s staging of Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997 which was filmed in secrecy at a disused RAF base and is due to be broadcast in season six next year.
And The Crown’s production team will be in Paris next week to recreate her final hours, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Last Wednesday, little-known actors Rufus Kampa and Will Powell, who portray William and Harry, Dominic West as Charles and Jonathan Pryce as the late Prince Phillip travelled to the disused RAF base 8km outside Bicester, Oxfordshire, where they were joined by hundreds of extras.
The show’s producers made the rare decision to shoot with a green screen that allows production experts to drop what they have filmed on to a background of their choice later. Few of the drama’s storylines have used the technology and a source close to The Crown said the decision was made due to the sensitivities of the scenes.
‘As well as it being impossible to have filmed these scenes in secret if it was done in the middle of London, it was also decided that it would be wholly inappropriate,’ the source said. ‘They were in and out of the airbase in a day and the scenes will form part of the funeral, which will span across an episode.’
However the show is coming in for sustained criticism from those close to the royal family, with the Netflix hit being lambasted as ‘crude, cruel and totally insensitive, particularly in light of the Queen’s recent death’. William Shawcross, the Queen Mother’s official biographer, said: ‘Nothing is sacred to [the writer of The Crown] Peter Morgan. He has made his republican sentiments and his contempt for our late Queen very clear. This is a vile series which lies to the public and has been incredibly hurtful to the royal family from the Queen and our new king down.’