Peter Morgan is a playwright, screenwriter and TV series creator and showrunner who has been described by The Guardian as “Britain’s leading contemporary screen dramatist,” and about whom the publication wrote, “There is no one who works quite like him. Actually, there might be nobody who has worked quite like him in British drama since Shakespeare. He specializes in taking the lives of public figures, mingling the events and words of their lives with his own imaginings, and recasting it as drama that is as close to documentary as possible without actually being a docudrama.”
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Morgan wrote the theatrical productions Frost/Nixon, which was on the West End in 2006 and Broadway in 2007; The Audience, which was on the West End in 2013 and Broadway in 2015; and Patriots, which was on the West End in 2023 and Broadway in 2024. He was also the screenwriter of TV films including 2003’s The Deal, 2006’s Longford and 2010’s The Special Relationship and theatrical films including 2006’s The Queen and The Last King of Scotland, 2008’s Frost/Nixon, 2009’s The Damned United, 2010’s Hereafter and 2013’s Rush.
Most famously, he created, show-ran and wrote or co-wrote all 60 episodes that comprised the six-season landmark Netflix drama series The Crown. That show, which unspooled between 2016 and 2024, has been described by The Los Angeles Times as “perhaps the final offering of TV’s Golden Age” and by The New York Times as “one of the most watched, argued over and influential creations in recent television history.” It was awarded 10 Emmys for its past five season and is now, for its sixth and final season, nominated for 18 Emmys, including best drama series and best writing for a drama series.
Morgan personally is the winner of five BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards and two Emmy Awards; has also been nominated for two Academy Awards, one Tony Award and one Olivier Award; and was, in 2015, named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for “services to drama” — an honor conferred upon him by none other than then-Prince Charles — and, in 2017, awarded a British Film Institute Fellowship.
Over the course of this episode, the 61-year-old reflected on how he was shaped by growing up the child of immigrants and losing his father when he was just 9; the accidental manner by which he wound up a writer; how he began using historical people and events as springing-off points for imagined exchanges involving powerful people — including presidents, prime ministers and a queen; what he hopes the legacy of The Crown will be; plus much more.
