Princess Diana's friend Jemima Khan splits with The Crown over depiction of late royal

Princess Diana's friend, TV and film producer Jemima Khan, has severed links with The Crown over the show's depiction of the late royal in the upcoming fifth season of the drama.

According to The Sunday Times, Khan was asked by Crown creator Peter Morgan to help write the scripts which covered Diana's last years before the princess died in a 1997 car crash. Khan subsequently pulled out of the project because Diana's story was not being handled "as respectfully or compassionately as I had hoped," she told the newspaper. A spokesman for The Crown, who was quoted in the Sunday Times article, said that Khan "has been part of a wide network of well-informed and varied sources who have provided extensive background information to our writers and research team...She has never been contracted as a writer on the series."

Khan's producing credits include the 2013 documentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks. She is the former wife of cricket legend Imran Khan, the current Prime Minister of Pakistan (the couple divorced in 2004). Diana twice visited Jemima while she was living in Pakistan.

According to The Sunday Times, Khan and Morgan became romantically involved last year and split up this February. "We worked together on the outline and scripts from September 2020 until February 2021," Khan told the newspaper. "When our co-writing agreement was not honored, and when I realized that particularly storyline would not necessarily be told as respectfully or compassionately as I had hoped, I requested that all my contributions be removed from the series and I declined a credit."

Elizabeth Debicki will play Diana in season 5 of The Crown, taking over the role from Emma Corrin. The season will premiere in November, 2022.

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