The Crown's Anti-Royal Journalist John Armstrong Didn't Actually Exist
Season 3 of The Crown has finally arrived, and viewers have been excitedly binge-watching the show's new episodes.
Major changes have taken place in Season 3, with new actors portraying all of the series's main characters. Plus, the new season's scandalous storylines are making viewers wonder how much of what they're watching is based in truth.
In Season 3, Episode 4, which is sweetly titled "Bubbikins" after Princess Alice's nickname for her son, the royal family finds itself at the brunt of negative publicity. After Prince Philip appears on American TV and laments the so-called paltry amount of money the royal family receives to live on, journalist John Armstrong (Colin Morgan) reports news of the interview back to the United Kingdom.
Following John's negative article, Philip decides that the royal family should star in a documentary on the BBC, giving the population an insight into their normalcy. The plan backfires, and again, the journalist and Irishman is the one to criticize the royals, saying they have an "overinflated sense of self-entitlement."
To try and counteract the bad press, Philip invites John to Buckingham Palace to interview Princess Anne. Instead, John ends up interviewing Philip's mother, Princess Alice, whose incredible life story he finds beguiling. As a result, the journalist writes a glowing celebration of Alice's achievements.
Though this storyline is undoubtedly fun to watch—pitting the royal family against their press critics—it turns out that much of the episode, like much of the show itself, is actually fiction.
According The Times, though Philip's BBC documentary did get a newspaper write-up, it was wholly positive. And more importantly, a journalist called John Armstrong didn't exist and is purely a character invented for The Crown.
The Times was also quick to note that the queen's request to bury the documentary and never let it be shown again is not quite true either. Per the publication, "It was repeated on Christmas Day 1969, New Year's Day 1971, and again in 1977." And in case it wasn't obvious, Alice reportedly didn't give any interviews during her time in the United Kingdom.
As Olivia Colman, who stars as the queen, told The Times, "Of course, it's mixed in with real things, real happenings and footage which looks almost the same as the real, but I hope they know that it's also a dramatized version." While John's tussle with the royal family definitely made for great TV, it was all for storytelling purposes.
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