Who Is Sydney Johnson, the Duke of Windsor’s Beloved Valet in ‘The Crown’?

The Crown Season 5 Episode 3 “Mou Mou” introduces us — and Mohamed Al Fayed (Salim Daw) — to Sydney Johnson (Jude Akuwudike). According to the show, Johnson was the Duke of Windsor’s beloved valet for decades. Al Fayed hires Sydney Johnson to be his own valet so he can learn how to be a real Englishman. The whole episode is devoted to Mohamed Al Fayed’s ravenous ambition to not just attain power and wealth, but the respect of the royals who colonized his homeland of Egypt. However it’s Sydney Johnson who might steal The Crown Season 5 Episode 3 on Netflix.

Like most of the characters in Netflix’s The Crown, Sydney Johnson was indeed a real person. But who was the real Sydney Johnson? How old was he when he went to work for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor? What was his relationship with Mohamed Al-Fayed?

Here’s everything you need to know about the real Sydney Johnson from The Crown Season 5…

Who Was Sydney Johnson? The Duke of Windsor’s Valet in The Crown?

When Sydney Johnson was just 16 years old, he was asked to leave his hometown of Nassau, The Bahamas to work as the Windsors’ personal valet in Paris. The Windsors were glamorous, but controversial figures. The Duke of Windsor, Edward VIII, abdicated the throne so he could marry his American mistress Wallis Simpson. However, the situation was more complicated than just a tale of star-crossed lovers. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were friends with Adolf Hitler and — as The Crown Season 5 reminds us — Nazi sympathizers.

Sydney Johnson met the Duke of Windsor while the latter was serving as Governor of the Bahamas during World War II. He impressed the Duke enough to earn an invitation to move with the Windsors to Paris, eventually working in their palatial home, Villa Windsor.

According to a 1990 People interview, Johnson worked for the Windsors for over thirty years. When the Duke of Windsor passed away in 1972, he stayed on for a year. However after Johnson’s own wife died, he had to retire from the Duchess’s service because she refused to let him leave at 4 PM to care for his four children.

In 1977, the Anglophile billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed hired Johnson to be his own personal valet. Wallis Simpson died of a stroke in 1985, leaving Villa Windsor in disrepair. The same People interview revealed that Al Fayed leased the estate in 1986 and attempted to restore it to its former glory. Nevetheless, executors acting on behalf of the royals “swiped the Windsors’ love letters.” In The Crown, these letters are hinted to be a bit more than love letters. (Remember how the Windsors were known to buddy up with the Nazis?)

Sydney Johnson died at the age of 69 in 1990. In the AP obituary for Johnson, Mohamed Al Fayed says he “was truly a gentlemen’s gentleman. We shall miss him very much.”