Palace Faces New Headache as Late Queen’s Confidante Reportedly Joins TV Documentary

Angela Kelly is already known as the crane driver’s daughter who rose to become Queen Elizabeth’s confidante and personal dresser. Now her extraordinary journey through the Royal Household could reach a worldwide audience.

The Mail on Sunday understands that Ms Kelly, 68, has agreed to cooperate with a film charting her life and her remarkable rise to a position of almost unparalleled influence within the Royal Household.

As the late Queen’s trusted ‘gatekeeper’, the outspoken Liverpudlian’s decision over what to disclose on camera could cause serious concern for King Charles and senior courtiers.

The project is expected to be a ‘scripted documentary’ combining interviews, archive footage and possibly dramatic reconstructions. Producers are reportedly working with Bafta-winning screenwriter Jeremy Brock MBE, whose credits include Mrs Brown, the film about Queen Victoria starring Judi Dench and Billy Connolly.

‘The royals will be worried, and they are right to be worried,’ said an insider.

The late Queen’s private opinions—from her views on Brexit to her relationship with King Charles—remain the subject of intense speculation.

The bond between the two women was so strong that the Queen once said they could have been ‘sisters’. Ms Kelly was trusted to ‘wear in’ her employer’s new shoes, style her hair and even massage her feet. She was also among a select group present at Balmoral when the monarch died four years ago.

Ms Kelly signed a confidentiality agreement that makes it difficult to profit from her three decades working for the Royal Household. The agreement is even said to prohibit her from using the words ‘King’ and ‘Palace’ for commercial purposes.

However, she may be protected by a letter from one of the Queen’s private secretaries granting express permission to publish three books. So far, only two of those books have appeared.

‘She knows everything you ever wanted to know, including the Queen’s real views on Meghan,’ said a royal observer. ‘I don’t think the Palace has a leg to stand on if she wants to tell her story. If Harry and Meghan can break all the rules, why can’t she?’

‘Angela has often spoken about wanting to spend time in the US, and she could do just that. There’s nothing they could do to her there.’

Ms Kelly, who has acquired an agent, would be in high demand on the American chatshow circuit.

But Ms Kelly was not admired by all her fellow courtiers. Willing to ruffle feathers and possessed of a fearsome temper, some Palace staff nicknamed her AK47, a play on her initials and the Soviet-era assault rifle. 

She is known to feel bruised by the speed at which she was asked to leave the Household and vacate her cottage on the Windsor estate, although friends insist she does not blame the senior royals.

The locks to the Queen’s private apartments at Windsor were changed within days of her death and Ms Kelly’s Palace-issue mobile phone was cut off.

In one Instagram post, Ms Kelly wrote: ‘I am too old to worry about who likes me and who dislikes me! …. If you love me – I love you! If you hate me – I don’t care!’

There will be some who fear a settling of scores. She is said to have crossed swords with both Camilla – when she was Duchess of Cornwall – and, famously, Prince Harry.

In his memoir Spare, Harry accused the dresser of obstructing Meghan’s attempts to practise wearing her tiara with a hairdresser before their 2018 wedding. The Mail on Sunday has been told the new film is controlled by 53 Degrees Global, a major London production company, in collaboration with Walt Disney.

The company promotes itself as ‘trusted by royalty’ and makes documentaries under the True Royalty Originals brand. It is closely associated with the True Royalty TV streaming service, described as Netflix for royal fans.

It is a particular sign of the late Queen’s warm regard for Ms Kelly that she was given unprecedented ‘permission and blessing’ to publish two books while still a member of the Royal Household: Dressing The Queen: The Jubilee Wardrobe in 2012 and The Other Side of The Coin – The Queen, The Dresser and The Wardrobe in 2019.

Although packed with colourful vignettes – including an episode in which the Queen and Ms Kelly went star-gazing – the books remained comparatively discreet. Although King Charles was said to dismayed by a photo in the second book which showed his mother, shoeless, her feet up on a divan.

Ms Kelly, who lives near Sheffield in a home bought for her by the King, certainly has a remarkable story to tell. Born to a dockyard crane operator, she worked as a lorry driver for the Women’s Royal Army Corps before landing a post as housekeeper to Sir Christopher Mallaby, British ambassador to Germany.

When the Queen and Prince Philip came to stay during an official visit to Berlin in 1992 they met Ms Kelly, and soon afterwards she was offered a job as a dresser at the Palace. She eventually became personal assistant, adviser and curator to Her Majesty, and in 2023 was created a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order.

During the monarch’s last months, she moved into a room on the same floor of the Queen’s private apartments in Windsor Castle – later telling friends she was effectively the Queen’s carer – and was one of only a handful of people in an adjoining chamber to the bedroom where she died at Balmoral.

A source at Disney last night said the Angela Kelly project would be lapped up by a US audience.

‘The market is flooded with royal stories but this one is unique,’ he said. ‘This is a person with access to the Queen, a woman who never voiced her opinions publicly.’

Buckingham Palace, Ms Kelly and 53 Degrees Global were all approached for comment.