'The Crown' season 6 recreates famous photographs of Princess Diana, Dodi Fayed, and King Charles. Here is how they compare to the real photos.
Eve Crosbie,Tufayel Ahmed
- "The Crown" season six recreates the first public photos of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed kissing.
- It also recreates snaps from King Charles' photo shoot with his sons, Princes William and Harry.
"The Crown" is back for a sixth and final season.
The first four episodes focus on the final months of Princess Diana's life as she begins dating Dodi Fayed, with whom she died in a tragic car crash in Paris in August 1997.
The second episode of season six, "Two Photographs," contrasts two key moments that took place in the summer of 1997.
The first is the media frenzy that ensued when the UK's Sunday Mirror newspaper published the first photos of Diana and Dodi kissing on a yacht in Sardinia.
The second is a photo shoot depicting Prince Charles and his sons, Princes William and Harry, having a much more subdued vacation at Balmoral Castle in Scotland.
Here's how "The Crown" depicts the moments — and what they looked like in real life.
On August 10, 1997, the UK's Sunday Mirror published the very first photograph of Diana and Dodi kissing on its front page. The headline? "The Kiss."
The photographs of Diana and Dodi were taken by Italian photographer Mario Brenna.
The Sunday Mirror published a 10-page spread of Brenna's photos, which it called "the most sensational pictures ever."
Under the headline was the text: "Now Dodi flies off to buy an engagement ring for Diana."
Here's how the front page was faithfully recreated in "The Crown."
In the show, a teenage Prince William (Rufus Kampa) is shown covertly reading the newspaper in his room, which causes him to grow concerned about his mother's relationship with Dodi.
Viewers also see the moment Diana and Dodi share the kiss, not realizing that a photographer is nearby.
After the explosive Diana photos were published, King Charles took part in a photo shoot with Princes William and Harry at Balmoral on August 12, 1997.
In "The Crown," the photo shoot is depicted as a response to the photos of Diana and Dodi in an effort to show Charles in a more sympathetic light to the British public.
Here's how the photo shoot is recreated in the show.
In "The Crown," Charles' aides hire the mild-mannered Scottish photographer, Duncan Muir, to take the photos. However, it appears that the character was invented for the purposes of the series.
In truth, the photo shoot, which took place during the royals' annual vacation to Balmoral, was attended by a number of Fleet Street photographers, per The Telegraph.
Princes William and Harry did indeed skip stones across the water, as shown in "The Crown."
And here they are with their pet dog.
"The Crown" takes some creative license when it comes to depicting how British newspapers ran these photos.
Charles' jaunt with his two sons is shown dominating the front pages of British newspapers — but this never happened.
In the show, the photo of the princes appears on the front page of The Mirror the day after they're released as a "royal world picture exclusive."
In reality, the photos didn't make such a splash that day. Instead, a story about Diana took the prime spot.
"Di and Dodi fly to psychic Rita," the front page of The Mirror read on August 13, 1997.
The pictures of the princes were featured in the newspaper but on pages eight and nine, showing that the tame photoshoot was no match for the public's appetite for updates about Dodi and Diana's romance.
Likewise, The Daily Record didn't feature the photos on the front page. Its coverage also noted how "embarrassed" William and Harry looked.
The Daily Record ran the photos on page five, instead choosing to dedicate the front page to a story that interested readers more: dustmen who had gone on strike to support a colleague accused of hitting a love rival with a wheelie bin.
The newspaper also commented on how William and Harry looked in the photos, with a subheading that read: "Young princes look embarrassed by dad's Harry Lauder image," per the British Newspaper Archive.
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