The creator of Netflix series The Crown shut down suggestions he might depict Princess Kate's cancer journey in a future fiction project and issued a warning to the media.
Peter Morgan was asked about the "where is Kate Middleton" viral social media storm that engulfed the Princess of Wales in February and March, and he told Variety: "Yeah, I wouldn't go anywhere near that."
Asked: "Do you watch it as a spectator," he replied: "I don't. I think I hope the British press behaves well and I hope we behave well because actually the press responds in many cases to our greed and I just hope we all collectively whether it's us or the press behaves well. These people need privacy sometimes."
Kate hasn't appeared in public since Christmas Day after major abdominal surgery in January led to a diagnosis of cancer. She began chemotherapy in late February, but didn't tell the public until March 22, during a social media frenzy around her absence from public life.
A trend on X, formerly Twitter, asking "where is Kate Middleton" was picked up by celebrities including Kim Kardashian and went repeatedly viral as conspiracy theories became increasingly morbid and grotesque.
In a rare misstep, Kate was forced to apologize after altering a family portrait with her children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, released to mark Mother's Day on March 10.
The Crown's fourth and fifth seasons sparked a major backlash after depicting the messy break up of King Charles III and Princess Diana's marriage.
Dame Judi Dench and former Prime Minister John Major were among those to denounce Season 5 before it had even aired, with the politician describing it as "damaging and malicious fiction" and "a barrel-load of nonsense peddled for no other reason than to provide maximum—and entirely false—dramatic impact."
"There's an unfortunate climate of outrage about everything," Morgan told Variety. "I try and understand it. I don't see it in American newspapers I don't see it in French in Austrian in wherever I travel I don't see the same degree of what I would describe as outrage.
"There is an outrage response to everything in the U.K. and I think it's deeply troubling. I can only imagine it's because journalists are under pressure to keep their jobs. Their jobs are being measured by clicks.
"If you get a certain amount of response to what it is that you write, you will get... but I'm appalled when I read English newspapers, no matter what the subject is, how much outrage and how much judgment and how much... so we got caught up in some of that but everybody gets caught up in that, no matter what."
Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
Do you have a question about Charles, Camilla, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We'd love to hear from you.
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Jack Royston is Newsweek's Chief Royal Correspondent based in London, U.K. He reports on the British royal family—including King Charles ... Read more
