- Lady Susan Hussey appears in season five of "The Crown," played by Haydn Gwynne.
- Lady Susan and her husband, Marmaduke, are involved in the BBC Panorama interview storyline.
Lady Susan Hussey's name has dominated headlines this week after being named as the senior royal staffer who made "unacceptable" comments to a guest at Buckingham Palace.
On Wednesday, Hussey resigned after Ngozi Fulani, a Black charity founder who attended a palace event on Tuesday, wrote on Twitter that an aide continued to question where she "really came from" after Fulani clarified that she was born in the UK. The leader of the UK Women's Equality Party, Mandu Reid — who told BBC News she witnessed the "racist" remarks — identified Hussey as the individual. Hussey did not respond to Insider's request for comment.
Hussey, 83, was one of Queen Elizabeth II's closest confidantes before her death and so, unsurprisingly, has been portrayed in Netflix's "The Crown."
Lady Susan Hussey and her husband Marmaduke appear in season 5 of 'The Crown' as allies of the Queen
In the latest season of the royal drama, she is played by BAFTA-nominated actor Haydn Gwynne in an episode that focuses on Princess Diana's famous Panorama interview.
Hussey was a lady-in-waiting to the late Queen Elizabeth, and the close relationship between the two is shown in the first scene she appears in where the late monarch celebrates Hussey's birthday at the palace.
Surrounded by other aristocratic women who also act as personal assistants to the monarch, they are shown enjoying cake and champagne while discussing the upcoming horse race at Cheltenham.
When the Queen says that she won't be able to make it in person, she is shocked to hear that it won't be airing on the BBC as usual.
Hussey then informs her that because Channel 4 has "paid more than five times what the BBC was paying, we couldn't afford to hold on to it."
On the show, the Husseys want to air a BBC birthday special for the Queen to cheer her up
"Can't you do anything about it? A whisper in hubby's ear?" one of the other ladies asks, referring to Hussey's husband, Marmaduke Hussey, Baron Hussey of North Bradley, who was Chairman of the Board of Governors of the BBC from 1986 to 1996.
In the next scene, Hussey is seen telling her husband about her birthday luncheon.
"The Queen was not her normal self today," she muses while getting into bed. "She was surrounded by her dearest friends, and yet … she seemed a little flat."
She then suggests to her husband that the BBC could commission a special to coincide with her upcoming 70th birthday "to cheer her up."
"That's a nice idea," Baron Hussey replies, but as viewers see in the episode, the proposed program is superseded by Director General of the BBC, John Birt, who instead commissions journalist Martin Bashir to interview the Princess of Wales for an episode of Panorama.
Instead of a birthday special for the Queen on the BBC, Diana was interviewed for an episode of Panorama. The Husseys were upset, both in the show and in real life.
According to Tatler, top executives at the BBC did not inform Lord Hussey about the interview — which was also hidden from Buckingham Palace officials — until the last minute because they were worried that he might put a stop to it.
When he is finally told about the Diana interview in "The Crown," he tells Birt that he will be on the "wrong side of history" if he decides to go ahead with it.
Later in the episode, he and his wife are shown apologizing to the Queen about the interview. "I blame myself entirely," Baron Hussey says before suggesting that he should hand in his resignation.
While the Queen responds that there is no need to do so, in real-life, Hussey did decide to step back from his role just two months after the incident in January 1996.
In an interview with the Telegraph in 2001, Baron Hussey said that his biggest mistake in his 10 years as chairman at the BBC was hiring Lord Birt.
"I was appalled, as were most of the other governors by John not consulting us," he said, referring to the bombshell interview. "Maybe secrecy was a condition of making this program but I also don't think the BBC should have got itself into a position involving the private problems of the Royal Family."
Baron Hussey later wrote in his memoirs that the incident had "darkened my last months at the BBC," per Tatler.
Lady Hussey had a long history with the royal family
He died at the age of 83 in 2006, and Lady Hussey continued her work at the palace, which she began in 1960 when she was 21 years old. She was initially hired to respond to letters after Prince Andrew's birth in 1960, according to Hello Magazine, and is godmother to Prince William, who condemned her recent actions in a statement on Wednesday.
She was by the Queen's side for every major event, including Prince Philip's funeral on April 17, 2021.
Hussey was the only member of staff to accompany the monarch in the car before Philip's funeral at St. George's Chapel in Windsor, Tatler reports. The Queen sat alone at the ceremony, likely due to the UK's social distancing guidelines at the time, Insider previously reported.