The Royal Family usually needs to adopt the ‘brace’ position each November, when a new series of The Crown is released by streaming giant Netflix.
However this year there may be a sigh of relief — at least from Prince Andrew — as it can be revealed that the forthcoming sixth and final series does not feature his friendship with convicted billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Instead, I am told that it concentrates on Charles and Camilla’s relationship, and the efforts of Prince — now King — Charles to get the Queen, his teenage children and the British people to accept their love.
The show begins just before the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in a car accident in Paris on August 31, 1997, and will — controversially — show both the aftermath of the crash and the funeral which followed.
Sources say the over-arching theme is how all concerned attempted to heal after the tragedy.
ALISON BOSHOFF: This year there may be a sigh of relief — at least from Prince Andrew — when the sixth and final series of The Crown airs. Pictured: James Murray as Prince Andrew
The series concludes with the marriage of Charles and Camilla in April 2005 — a civil ceremony at Windsor Guildhall followed by a blessing at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle.
The Queen did not attend the civil ceremony but did go to the blessing and the reception after it.
Charles is played by Dominic West and Camilla by Olivia Williams. Imelda Staunton is the Queen.
Newcomers Rufus Kampa and Ed McVey will play Prince William in his early and later teens; and Will Powell and Luther Ford play a young and slightly older Prince Harry.
Prince Andrew (played by James Murray) initially met Epstein in 1999 through his friend Ghislaine Maxwell and invited both of them to Balmoral for a shooting weekend in that year. The following year, the three of them attended Royal Ascot.
In 2001 the now-infamous picture of Prince Andrew with his hand on the waist of masseuse Virginia Giuffre was taken at Maxwell’s London house. She claimed that Epstein trafficked her to the Prince.
Prince Andrew has always denied the allegations and says he doesn’t recall ever having met Giuffre.
Epstein was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment after pleading guilty to prostituting minors in 2008. After his release in 2010, he was photographed with Andrew in Central Park in New York. Epstein was found dead in his jail cell in 2019, after being charged with further sex trafficking offences.
Prince Andrew initially met Epstein in 1999 through his friend Ghislaine Maxwell (pictured at Ascot in 2000)
Prince Andrew stepped back from public life following a disastrous interview with Newsnight in 2019.
Giuffre pursued a civil suit against Prince Andrew which was settled out of court in February 2022. A month prior, the Queen stripped him of his patronages and military titles and effectively banished him from public life. He also lost the use of the HRH title.
Actor Murray, who assumed the role of Andrew in the last series of The Crown, said: ‘Don’t judge me on this, but I quite enjoy playing challenging or polarising roles, or certainly scenes that could divide an audience, because I think that’s fun. We’re doing TV drama and it’s not a documentary. So, from an actor’s point of view, it’s a joy to play.’
Meanwhile, that Newsnight interview will be dramatised in the Netflix TV film Scoop — with Rufus Sewell as Prince Andrew. Emily Maitlis is played by Gillian Anderson and TV fixer Sam McAllister is played by Billie Piper. The movie has already been shot and is expected to come out early in 2024.
When Harry met Idris and got him to DJ at his wedding
Actor and DJ Idris Elba is clearly not the kind of man to stand on ceremony, and reveals that he and Prince Harry made friends after saying: ‘Yo’ to each other in nightclubs.
Elba told the Smartless podcast: ‘I was DJ-ing in all these clubs where Harry would show up and he was like ‘Yo!’ and I’m like ‘Yo!’ And then at one point he was like, ‘Listen man, I’m getting married.’ I was like, ‘Yo! That’s amazing.’
‘He goes, ‘I want you to DJ.’ ‘ Harry went on to make a request. ‘I was like, ‘I don’t do requests!’ ‘ Elba recalled. Maybe not . . . but he did attend the wedding in 2018, and he did DJ at the reception afterwards.
Yo! DJ Idris Elba and Prince Harry
Former racing driver Naomi Schiff is at the wheel of Channel 4’s new motoring show Bangers: Cars Of The People.
Schiff, who’s part of the Sky Sports Formula 1 commentary team, has made a four-part show which puts rather less exotic cars — such as the Renault Espace and Citroen Saxo — through their paces.
Musician Tinie (formerly known as Tinie Tempah) is her co-host.
Dad’s minted but Anais is in trouble on Vinted!
Anais Gallagher (pictured), whose dad Noel is worth £60million, has been making pocket money by selling clothes cheaply on the Vinted app.
So far, the 23-year-old has made £110 — but she has attracted a string of one-star reviews, for being slow to send the items by first-class post.
Six out of seven reviews are one-star because of auto feedback classifying the sale as ‘not complete’.
Influencer Anais, who split with her boyfriend Julius earlier this year, explains that she is ‘away working’ and promises to post the goods by first-class post next week.
Her dad split from his second wife, Sara MacDonald, in January this year. They have two teenage sons.
Anais is Noel’s daughter by first wife Meg Mathews.
Anais Gallagher (pictured), whose dad Noel is worth £60million, has been making pocket money by selling clothes cheaply on the Vinted app
Hugh must be joking with £10,000 Colin jibe
Who doesn’t love a joke — but would you pay £10,000 to make one? That’s how much Hugh Grant’s very public jibe against old frenemy Colin Firth cost him. Grant paid to have a plaque put in Bafta’s newly refurbished Princess Anne Theatre late last year. It reads: ‘In loving memory of Colin Firth. Not dead yet, but looks it.’
Bafta is a charity, dependent on fund-raising to support its bursaries and scholarships.
Grant and Firth, both 62, played love rivals in the first two Bridget Jones films, and famously had a fist fight on screen (as well as a spot of competitive dieting off screen, to get into shape for their roles).
Firth once said of his screen rival: ‘I get on really well with him. I like the guy, despite his outrageous rudeness about me. It’s a running joke, and we do it to each other. I’m always hearing how he’s announced I’m too old to be in the cinema any more.’
Oh Paddington! What on earth will Aunt Lucy say?
Ben Whishaw is beloved by family audiences, thanks to two recent performances as Paddington bear — with a further film being made this summer.
But his latest movie is quite different in content and tone. Whishaw is the star of Passages, which has its UK premiere at the London arm of the Sundance Film Festival tonight.
In the picture, he plays Martin, the husband of self-obsessed film director Tomas. Tomas has an affair with teacher Agathe, played by French actress Adele Exarchopoulos.
Critics have described the gay sex scenes as ‘unfettered’, and one friend who watched the film says there are some moments which would make Aunt Lucy’s marmalade sandwiches curl. Not least among them is some full-frontal nudity from Whishaw, undreamt of even in darkest Peru.
The film is by writer-director Ira Sachs, who says he was inspired during the pandemic to create a film about intimacy. Meanwhile, the loveable bear’s next outing — Paddington In Peru — will start filming later this month, unbelievably six years after the second film in the series (which has so far taken £400 million at the box office) was released.
Sally Hawkins is stepping away from the role of Mrs Brown for this one and will be replaced by Emily Mortimer.
In a statement, Hawkins said: ‘For me it has felt the right time to hand the reins over to another. Emily Mortimer . . . will embody the essence of Mary Brown and yet make it utterly her own.’ The loss of Hawkins is balanced out by the arrival of Oscar-winner Olivia Colman, who plays a character running a home for bears in Peru.
These Dragons are still a bit too close for comfort
The second series of Game Of Thrones prequel House Of The Dragon is currently filming in the UK — and star Matt Smith has been spotted out and about at the Chiltern Firehouse this week on a night off.
In the show he plays Daemon Targaryen, who marries his niece Rhaenyra, played by Emma D’Arcy (both pictured).
She says: ‘If we’re going to show this relationship and we’re going to do the whole thing justice, the ick factor has to be present, because that’s honest.’
Smith says: ‘Obviously we’re dealing with events that are hundreds of years old and the morality was different then. But ultimately, it’s important to the story. So, therefore, Daemon and Rhaenyra do their thing.’
The second series of Game Of Thrones prequel House Of The Dragon is currently filming in the UK
Will Russell call it a day after Goering?
Actor Russell Crowe says he is contemplating packing it in at the age of just 59.
Crowe said this week: ‘You are standing in front of the mirror, and go: ‘Who the f*** is that?!’ I am in that period now.
‘I will take (85-year-old director) Ridley Scott as my role model: he is still discovering new things in his work. Or I will just stop, and you will never hear from me again. I haven’t decided what it’s going to be. These are two very valid choices.’
Crowe will soon be seen on screen as the father of Kraven The Hunter in the big budget Sony film of the same name; and is also signed up to play Hermann Goering in a new picture called Nuremberg.
Goering, a WWI fighter pilot ace who rose to power within the Nazi party, killed himself by ingesting cyanide in 1946 — in Nuremberg — on the eve of his scheduled execution, after being convicted of crimes against humanity.
