The True Story Behind the Princess Margaret Plot in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

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In the penultimate episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Princess Margaret appears on the Gordon Ford Show, and Midge (Rachel Brosnahan) has a chance to shine when she writes a bit for the royal guest. "I love her," Midge says. "She's brassy, unencumbered by the crown, kind of sexy."

Princess Margaret (Kate Abbruzzese) is set to appear on the late night show, and Midge pens a sequence where she gives a weather report and jokes about the Boston tea party.

While this never happened—because Maisel is fictional, as is the Gordon Ford Show—Margaret did really tour the U.S. in the 1960s. As Sarene Leeds notes in Vulture, "Princess Margaret doing the weather report...was likely inspired by the now–King Charles III, an aspiring actor himself, doing the weather report for BBC Scotland back in 2012."

In reality, Margaret's U.S. tour actually took place a few years later; she and her then-husband Antony Armstrong-Jones traveled to America in 1965. It caused an uproar in the UK, with regard to the cost to Margaret's reported demands. The events of Margaret's tour even featured in season three of The Crown in episode two, "Margaretology.

By all accounts, however, the real Margaret had a good sense of humor—and it's not a stretch to imagine she would be up for doing a late-night bit. Christopher Warwick, who wrote her authorized biography Princess Margaret: A Life of Contrasts, said, "She was great fun. She had a lovely sense of humor. She could be very naughty."

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