The True Story of Queen Elizabeth’s Friendship with Reverend Billy Graham

Dec 11, 2017 by

by Caroline Hallemann, Town and Country Magazine:

Season two of The Crown delves into their first meeting. Here’s what the religious leader has to say about their relationship.

This season of The Crown powers through the second decade of Queen Elizabeth’s reign exploring everything from the Kennedy family’s arrival on the world stage, to Prince Philip’s alleged infidelity to the disaster that was the Suez Crisis, but for show creator Peter Morgan, the “best bit of writing” in the season was a storyline about the Queen’s friendship with the American evangelical Reverend Billy Graham.

“The Billy Graham episode is about Elizabeth wanting to deepen her Christianity,” Morgan told Vanity Fair. “She stops reflecting on forgiveness as a central tenant of Christianity at precisely the time that she’s asked whether she can or can’t forgive her uncle for [meeting with Nazis and a general inclination toward appeasement]. The two story themes dovetail quite nicely. It’s the best bit of writing in the season.”

During the episode, the Queen sits with her mother watching Graham on the television, enraptured by his sermon. She almost has a crush on him, at one point telling Prince Philip, “I think he’s rather handsome,” the rare moment she can make her husband jealous.

We see Graham giving a sermon in Windsor Chapel, and later on, the pair of them discussing scripture. In season one, Elizabeth’s role as the leader of the Anglican church impeded her sister’s marriage to Peter Townsend, but this is the first time the show has delved into her faith.

The plot point was a favorite of Robert Lacey’s, the show’s historical consultant.

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Read also: MPs are trying to ban anti-gay preacher Franklin Graham from entering the country, Pink News

 

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