For nearly three decades, Angela Kelly was one of the people closest to Queen Elizabeth II, moving from dresser to personal assistant, adviser and trusted confidante, and now the woman once described as the late Queen’s “gatekeeper” is reportedly preparing to take her extraordinary story to television. According to the Daily Mail, Kelly, 68, has agreed to cooperate with a scripted documentary about her life and years inside the Royal Household, a project that could combine interviews, archive footage and dramatic reconstruction.

And that is precisely why the project is attracting so much attention, because Kelly was not simply another member of palace staff who happened to work around the monarch; she had an unusually intimate view of Queen Elizabeth’s private world and was among the very small group of people around the Queen during her final months.

The Daily Mail described Kelly as the late monarch’s “gatekeeper,” a position that reflected just how much access and influence she had accumulated during her 28 years working for the Royal Family. She began her career far from the corridors of Buckingham Palace, having been born to a dockyard crane operator and later working as a lorry driver in the Women’s Royal Army Corps before becoming a housekeeper for the British ambassador to Germany. Her life changed after Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip encountered her during a 1992 visit to Berlin, after which she was offered a position as the Queen’s dresser.

Over time, Kelly became far more than a dresser, eventually serving as the Queen’s personal assistant, adviser and curator, while developing a relationship with Elizabeth that reportedly went well beyond the formal boundaries of monarch and employee. She was also made a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 2023 in recognition of her service.

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Her proximity to the Queen became particularly significant during Elizabeth’s final years. Kelly moved into a room on the same floor as the Queen’s private apartments at Windsor Castle and later told friends that she had effectively become the monarch’s carer, while she was also among the small number of people in an adjoining room when Elizabeth died at Balmoral.

That history explains why one unnamed insider quoted by the Daily Mail offered a blunt assessment of the coming documentary: “The royals will be worried, and they are right to be worried.”

Kelly has already demonstrated that she is willing to discuss aspects of her royal experience, having previously published books about her years serving the Queen. Those books were considered relatively discreet, although one photograph showing Queen Elizabeth without shoes with her feet resting on a divan reportedly displeased King Charles.

There is also an intriguing Hollywood angle to the story, because the project is reportedly being developed with Bafta-winning screenwriter Jeremy Brock, whose previous work includes Mrs Brown, the film about Queen Victoria starring Judi Dench and Billy Connolly. A source described the potential American audience as particularly attractive, saying: “The market is flooded with royal stories but this one is unique. This is a person with access to the Queen, a woman who never voiced her opinions publicly.”

And that may be the biggest hook of all.

Angela Kelly spent decades standing close enough to the Queen to see the monarchy from a perspective very few people ever could. Now, if the reported documentary goes ahead, the former royal insider could finally have the opportunity to tell that story in her own words, potentially opening another remarkable window into the private world of Queen Elizabeth II.