‘The Crown’ Season 5 Episode 3 Recap: The Rise of Mou Mou

The Crown Season 5 Episode 3 almost exists in a vacuum, as it focuses entirely on the background of Mohamed Al-Fayed, the Egyptian-born owner of The Ritz Hotel in Paris and Harrod’s Department Store in London, whose son Dodi would famously die in the same car crash as Diana. But what brings the Al-Fayed’s story out of the vacuum and into the Crowniverse is the moment Mohamed, also known as Mou Mou, is finally accepted by the only royal that will have him, Diana.

Braided into the story of Mohamed’s rise to richness in this episode is the story of Sydney Johnson. This isn’t the first time Sydney was on The Crown; he first appeared in season three tending to the former king, Edward, as the former royal was dying. In this episode, in flashbacks, we see a young Sydney first being offered the job as Edward’s valet shortly after Edward abdicated the throne. This was a role he would hold for over 30 years and one he seemingly adored, and the story of how he became a valet for Al-Fayed, as depicted in this episode, is fascinating and completely true. The Crown has been criticized for its overarching whiteness, and this episode does acknowledge that people of color do exist but it also acknowledges that, in this exclusive world of royals, they have always been outsiders.

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As a young man in Egypt, Mohamed Al-Fayed dreamed of a bigger life for himself and, despite his father’s deep hatred of the British thanks to their occupation of Egypt since the 1880s, Mohamed idolized the royals. Mohamed, once a poor man, married and had his son Dodi (played as an adult here by Khalid Abdalla), and over time he built an empire so grand, it allowed him to make a play to purchase the ailing Ritz Hotel in Paris. His offer is initially scoffed at by the current owner, Monique Ritz (naturally), and he realizes that she is blowing him off because he’s an outsider. A Middle Easterner with brown skin. He tells her off, warning her that she’s making an enemy of him with her disappointing and frankly, racist, hot take of him. Monique Ritz hears him and, pushing aside her white fragility and internal biases, sells him the hotel.

At the grand reopening gala at the hotel, it’s clear that Al-Fayed has restored the hotel to its former glory and the fete is a success, save for one blemish. There’s a Black man there. Mohamed Al Fayed, having just accused Monique Ritz of discriminating against him, tells his son Dodi to fire the lone Black server on the waitstaff, which Dodi does, begrudgingly. (It’s perhaps a wee bit ironic that this party, at least in The Crown‘s telling, is where Mohamed meets his future wife, Heini, a Finnish socialite who is very white and very blonde.) Dodi informs his father that the man he just fired worked for King Edward, and Mohamed’s desire for royal star-fuckery overrides his racism and he’s like, actually, set up a meeting for us. And so, he meets Sydney and hires him. If he was good enough to be an abdicated king’s valet, he’s good enough for Mohamed.

Mohamed wants Sydney to teach him all the ways of British high society, so he can become “that rare thing, a British gentleman.” It’s all he has ever wanted, and now he has someone, someone with a dignified background, who can show him how. And so, we are gifted a montage that depicts the merits and importance of everything from P.G. Wodehouse, to afternoon tea, to golf and polo. And of course, the royal family. “If you are seen in their company, if you are known and trusted by them, then all doors will open everywhere else,” Sydney explains. And so Mohamed attempts to ingratiate himself into all the places where the royals might be, including the polo grounds, but he’s still held at arm’s length and seen as an outsider there, too. That’s when he decides that buying Harrods, the most hallowed hallways in London, will make him truly British.

Dodi thinks the expense is exorbitant, and wishes his father would bankroll some of his own dreams for once. This is how I found out that both Dodi and Mohamed were producers on Chariots Of Fire, the 1982 Oscar winner for Best Picture. (Producer David Puttnam’s speech, which appears in the show, did indeed name drop the pair.) How did I never know this? He also produced Hook and the atrocious Demi Moore vehicle The Scarlet Letter. I feel like my dinner party conversation is going to get a whole infusion of “fun facts about ’90s movies” now.

Success continues to follow the Al-Fayeds in every endeavor, and the money keeps snowballing, but it still isn’t getting them any closer to the royals. That’s when Sydney explains that Wallis Simpson, Edward’s widow, has died and their Paris estate, now in disrepair is up for auction.

Mohamed buys the estate and its contents in an effort to own a piece of British royal history, but also to give the royals a reason to notice him. He spares no expense refurbishing it, calling it “my gift to the British royal family.” Once completed, he invites them to see the restoration that he’s calling “Villa Windsor,” and the queen rolls her eyes at his thirsty attempt to get their attention. However, they catch wind that most of the contents in the house, including many valuables and the Duke’s confidential papers and diaries (which allude to his friendships with Nazis), are still in there, and so they send the queen’s private secretary in her stead. When he arrives, he essentially ransacks the house, taking all of the contents back to England with him, but rather than be insulted, Mohamed is honored that the items are returning to their rightful owners. “Mohamed Al-Fayed just made the Queen of England very happy indeed!” You can’t fault the man for his unusually sunny outlook.

Things take a turn when Sydney’s subtle coughing turns into Sydney on his deathbed. (In reality, Villa Windsor was reopened to the public on December 10, 1989. Johnson passed away soon after in January of 1990.) Though he was able to see the home he served in for decades restored to its former glory, he wouldn’t live long enough to enjoy it, but it is because of him that Mohamed Al-Fayed would make so many in-roads into British society. That includes his fateful meeting with Diana. As the owner of Harrods, Al-Fayed sponsors a polo event where he’s guaranteed a seat next to the queen, but when she spots him sitting in her row, she sends Diana in her place to sit with him. It would be a fateful match (at least in this dramatization of the story), because Diana and Mohamed, calling himself Mou Mou, hit it off.

I’m not sure we’ve ever seen Princess Diana be so quite at ease and herself as she was when she meets Mohamed in the final moments of this episode, the pair, both perpetual outsiders with the royal family and especially the queen. “Special gifts for the boss lady?” Diana asks Mohamed when she sits next to him and noticed a Harrods bag at his feet.

“Boss lady seems allergic to me,” he tells her.

“Well, that makes two of us,” she responds.

The chemistry between Debicki and Salim Daw, who plays Al-Fayed, is fantastic, the pair immediately bond over the wicked queen’s treatment of them and they seem to feed off of one another.

“My name is Mohamed, but you must call me Mou Mou,” he tells her.

“Why must I call you Mou Mou?” she asks with a sly grin.

“All my friends do!”

“Gosh, we’re friends already? That was quick,” she jokes.

“Too quick?” he asks.

The adorable banter goes on and on until it’s interrupted by Dodi, whose presence makes little impression on Diana. He leaves quickly, and Diana and Mou Mou continue to have a smashing time together, as the queen, spying from afar, lowers her binoculars and says, “Well, that seems to have worked out well!”

In real life, Diana and Mohamed did indeed begin a friendship well before her relationship with Dodi, and a Vanity Fair article from 1995, two years before her death, reported that “they spark off each other very well.” It’ll be a few more years, in this timeline, until sparks fly with Dodi too, but we have a lot more ground to cover until then.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.