The Crown, who was Dodi Al-Fayed’s ex-girlfriend, Kelly Fisher

The sixth season of The Crown begins with two women, and no one is not Camilla. The current queen of the United Kingdom arrives a little later, but kicking off the first episode of the last season of the Netflix series are Diana Spencerplayed by Elizabeth Debicki in her best role, and Kelly Fisher, played by Erin Richards. The latter, we immediately discover, is Dodi Al-Fayed’s girlfriend, much to the disapproval of her father, who calls her “the gold digger”.

But as we know Peter Morgan loves to mix true facts with elements of fantasy, deviating from reality whenever he feels like it. The Crown is no exception. So in the case of Kelly Fisher, what is true and what is fiction?

Kelly Fisher and Dodi Al-Fayed first met in July 1996. She was a model who had appeared on the covers of Elle And Wwhile he was an international playboy who, according to what has been reconstructed, received a check of approximately 900 thousand dollars a month from his father Mohamed Al Fayed, owner among other things of Harrods but also of the Ritz in Paris. In February of the same year Dodi asked her to marry him at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles. “In a short time, she too became convinced that she was in love with him,” a witness told the Daily Mail. The two were supposed to get married on August 9th. That day, however, a surprise photo was published in newspapers around the world: Dodi and Princess Diana kissing on board the Fayed family yacht. According to Kelly Fisher’s version, this is how she also discovered their relationship. The following week the model sued him for about half a billion dollars.

So, the following week, she sued him for $440,000. The lawsuit obviously made the front page immediately. “I know that when you are left for someone else you can suffer a lot, but I didn’t know that you could sue,” Diana says to Dodi in a beautiful scene of The Crown, certainly alluding to his Carlo and his chosen lover Camilla. “Diana stole my man, now I want a million dollars,” read the Daily Telegraph Australian of the time, while the The Mirror London headline: “You’re a cheater, Dodi.” During a press conference, Fisher’s lawyer, Gloria Allred, said that Dodi’s family had asked her client to stop her work. From there, the request for damages.

According to those in the know, the two then attempted an agreement. But Michael Cole, spokesman for Harrods, has always rejected the model’s claims: «We leave it to the common sense of the British and American people to judge these developments for what they are. If a subpoena is issued, Mr. Fayed’s attorneys in Los Angeles will respond appropriately.”

Kelly Fisher then sold her story to the News of the World by Rupert Murdoch, the most hated today by Princes Harry and William. In one of his statements he bombards the model she said she had sex with Dodi on one of his yachts a few hours before he left to meet Diana on another of his boats anchored nearby.

Did Diana know? Dominick Dunne wrote no on Vanity Fair. In The Crown, however, the reconstruction is slightly different. There are the two yachts, but the relationship with Diana had yet to begin. After all, Diana had already played that scene in her marriage to Prince Charles, it is unlikely that she would have tolerated it again.

After the tragic accident in which Diana and Dodi lost their lives, Kelly Fisher withdrew her lawsuit. In 2008 the transcript of a phone call between Fisher and Dodi was made known by the Royal Courts of Justice during an official inquiry into the death of Princess Diana: «You even took me on a plane to St. Tropez», she said to Dodi, « to sit on a boat while you seduced Diana during the day and then came to me for sex all night.” His reply: «Do you want to stop? We broke up, Kelly.”