For the past 10 years, the British playwright and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Peter Morgan has devoted much of his professional life to Queen Elizabeth II—recasting the long-reigning royal as a sympathetic public servant in 2006’s The Queen and again in 2013’s stage production The Audience, both of which starred Helen Mirren as Her Majesty. When Morgan approached Netflix with his idea for a third Elizabethan project, the streaming company, eager to expand its global footprint, not only snatched up the series, but reportedly gave Morgan $100 million in financing to adapt his fascination on the epic, sumptuous scale explored by the long-ago likes of David Lean and his collaborator Robert Bolt.

“Robert Bolt’s storytelling is the kind that I grew up with and aspired to,” Morgan tells Vanity Fair over a recent breakfast in Los Angeles, referring to the Oscar-winning screenwriter responsible for Dr. Zhivago, A Man for All Seasons, and Lawrence of Arabia. “The writing’s quite invisible. . . . It’s not rat-a-tat dialogue and look-at-me action. It’s intimate story unfolding against epic historical background.”

Though royal news seems to be nonstop this month, thanks to milestones like Prince Philip’s retirement and the 20th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death, Morgan is trying to ignore the hailstorm of royal headlines so that he can focus on the third season he’s mapping out.

“I think [writing in] response to news is always catastrophic . . . unless you are responding essentially overnight like Saturday Night Live. I think it’s much better to wait a decade, because then at least the possibility exists for you to write on a metaphorical level. The story is not just about your characters . . . it also becomes about something else because of the way in which we now look back on them.”

Prince Philip (Matt Smith) and Queen Elizabeth (Claire Foy) share an intimate moment in The Crown’s second season. By Alex Bailey/Netflix.

“The Diana stuff . . . I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do with her if I ever get that far,” Morgan admits, contradicting a previous report that Diana would be introduced at the end of The Crown’s third season. In fact, Morgan is not certain of a third season, full stop. “I know we’re commissioned up to a certain point, or at least we’re talking about doing it, but none of us have agreed to do it . . . a third and fourth season. I’ve mapped out what might be a third season. If she were to be introduced, it’d probably have to wait until the fourth.”