Not the best night for the actual British royals was it? Before the Golden Globes started, CBS dropped their first teaser for Oprah’s exclusive with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle which is all they’re talking about in the media in England today, and then during the Globes, The Crown basically swept all its categories winning Best Drama, Best Actress (Emma Corrin), Actor (Josh O’Connor), and Supporting Actress (Gillian Anderson). Remember, this is for the Diana season. This is the season people have been waiting for. And this is the season so many people were pressed about. You’ll recall, after Netflix released season four of The Crown back in November, there was all kinds of angst about whether or not it was fiction, whether or not it was fair, that the Queen and her family were depicted as insensitive assholes who did not support Princess Diana and threw her under the bus. 

 

And now they not only have to look at all these headlines about the show dominating at the Globes but a renewed interest in the season…and the NEXT season, which will continue to explore the Diana storyline, right up to the point of her death. Which, you know, her son Harry just alluded to in the Oprah interview when he talked about “history repeating itself”. Nobody needs an explainer there. Just as nobody needs an explainer for what Emma Corrin meant when she thanked Diana for what she taught her: 

Because while Diana may have been complicated and certainly not faultless, all these years later, that’s not the mythology. The mythology is that she was an angel – and while The Crown certainly doesn’t depict her as an angel, the story they tell about how isolated she was, how unembraced, certainly fuels the part of the mythology that the royals did her dirty. And, much to the real royals’ chagrin, they just got rewarded for it…the timing couldn’t be worse. 

 

We are heading into a week where talk of Harry and Meghan’s Oprah interview is going to be endless. And Hollywood just gave us a refresher on the “history repeating itself”. Generally, when shows and movies win things, people watch them, or they re-watch them. There are going to be people over the next few days chasing a first watch or a re-watch of season four of The Crown with Oprah’s two-hour special on Sunday. And given how clever Netflix’s social media team is, and we know they’re aware of all the handwringing that was happening a few months ago over the show, I wouldn’t be surprised if they trolled the royals – again – with some creative promotion linking the series to Harry and Meghan’s interview. It’s going to be a wild week. 

By the way, this tweet cracked me up: