Features
Two remarkable personalities: screenwriter and ex PM
The Screenwriter
Peter Julian Robin Morgan, CBE, is my first person of interest. He was born on April 19, 1963, in Wimbledon, London, to immigrant parents: father a Jew who escaped Nazi Germany in 1933 and a Roman Catholic mother who fled Poland under the Soviets. His father died when he was nine. He grew up in London and attended two schools in London and Somerset and obtained a fine arts degree from Leeds University.
He developed a fascination for theatre and wrote drama scripts, soon moving to film and TV. Very soon he was noticed, successful and went on to win many awards, including five BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Award) awards, two Emmy, four Golden Globes and nominated for two Academy Awards, a Tony and Laurence Olivier Award. In 2017 he won a British Film Industry Fellowship.
What are his successful scripts? Among many, The Deal (2003) about the rivalry between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair; Frost /Nixon (2005); The Queen (2006), The Audience (2013) on the Queen’s weekly meetings with her Prime Ministers, the Queen portrayed by Helen Mirren, which lead Peter Morgan to script a play starring Queen Elizabeth II with Churchill. It was his The Queen and The Audience that inspired him to write the script for the 60 episode series in six parts of The Crown – for Netflix and BBC
The almost unbelievable fact is that Peter Morgan wrote the entire script for the 60 episodes for The Crown series which was directed, even produced by different persons, and spans the years of Elizabeth’s courtship, marriage and reign, ending in the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla. Morgan was also the creator and showrunner of the filming of all episodes, continued from 2016 to 2023.
Members of the royal family were portrayed by three sets of actors: one set per two parts. While documenting the Queen’s life almost to her death, the series explores national and international politics, personalities and social change “through the inter-generational royal family.” Another comment was that The Crown started a seismic shift in royal representation on stage and screen; it is near documentary while earlier films on royalty were satirical or comic.
I quote Roslyn Sukas in her December 12, 2023 article in the NYT: “In negotiation between on-the-record history and speculative imaginings characteristic of his work, Morgan has portrayed the royal family as ordinarily human, with complicated and rich inner lives. Private versus public, tradition versus modernity, relevance versus mystery: The Crown has explored these issues over the decades of the queen’s reign.”
One large question hovers over many an episode: truth or fiction; to believe or take the given story as imaginative creation? Conclusion of critics too is that most of the story is factual but what happens behind royal doors had naturally to be written as surmised. Morgan has written widely on the British Royals and would certainly have researched much.
Jacinda Ardern and Clarke Gayford
Thus he could accurately guess how conversations ran and the reason for certain events. For instance the scene at the dinner organized in Al Fayed’s apartment in Paris when Dodi proposes to Diana and she refuses to be engaged to be married. Long dialog imagined by Morgan. How else write that crucial scene which had to be included. Al Fayed Snr (Dodi’s father) claimed they were engaged; what Morgan showed seemed more real.
“The series has come in for opprobrium – particularly over the final two seasons from outraged royal-watchers, critics and public figures, who have called out historical inaccuracies and objected to imagined conversations and encounters.”
One anecdote to prove Morgan’s accuracy. Series 5 starts with VE Day and Britain wild with celebration. The very young Margaret Rose and Elizabeth in army uniform, are escorted out of the gates of Buckingham Palace by two securities. They steal in to the Ritz and dance and merry make to return early the next morning. Discussing the session, I told my son that Morgan had given full rein to his imagination. My son corrected me severely; the incident was true; the princesses were encouraged by King George VI to mix with the general public, incognito of course.
Morgan commenting on the end of the series and his involvement commented: “People keep saying, you must be so happy and proud, but I’m not yet. I’m still a bit traumatized. But I promise I will smoke a cigar soon.” He is already on his next project.Never can you keep skill and expertise down.
Ex Prime Minister
Jacinda Ardern (43) finally wed Clarke Gayford (47), TV presenter who had been her fiancé since 2013, on January 13 this year. They have a daughter born in 2018, making her the world’s second elected head of government to give birth while head, the first being Benazir Bhutto.
Dame Jacinda Kate Laurell Ardern
was in born in Hamilton, NZ, in1980; her father a police officer and mother a school catering assistant. She joined the Labour Party at age 17,was elected an MP in 2008 and Labour’s Leader in 2017 and served as 40th Prime Minister from 2017 to 2023, when she resigned. She graduated from the University of Waikato in 2001 and worked as researcher in PM Helen Clark’s office. Later she worked in London in Tony Blair’s Cabinet Office, to return to NZ to contest in the general election of 2008. That year she was elected President of the International Union of Socialist Youth. She was the world’s youngest woman head of state at age 37.
She surprisingly resigned the premiership in January 2023, leaving people questioning reasons for her sudden decision. She is a Trustee for Prince William’s Earthshot Prize and a Fellow of Harvard University. Recently, she made a public promise to Gayford, whom she thanked for his support and sacrifices: “To Clarke, let’s finally get married.”
International recognition, approval and admiration came to her in torrents over her management of the Covid pandemic, leading NZ to be one of the few countries that managed to contain the infection and save as many as 80,000 lives. On March 15, 2019, she made world headlines with the manner in which she responded to the consecutive mass shootings in two mosques in Christchurch, NZ.
Will we forget photographs that sped around the world showing Jacinda Ardern hugging face covered Muslim women and even bearded men who were sorrowing for murdered family members? She also steered her country through volcanic eruptions and terrorist threats and won a landslide victory for the Labour Party in 2020.
Ending my account on Peter Morgan I wrote that expertise and skill cannot be kept down. I ask that same question, changing the character plus points of ‘skill and expertise’ to ‘charisma, humaneness, popularity and unobtrusive leadership qualities’ of Jacinda Ardern Gaylord. Can/will she be left to live a private life?