Over its four seasons and counting, The Crown has proven to be one of Netflix’s most watched and most talked about series. But not everyone is a fan. Among its detractors is the Royal Family itself, who have been the opposite of chuffed, especially as the show has gotten to the Diana years. (Her tragic death won’t be covered until the sixth season.) But it also has a non-Royal hater in Dame Judi Dench.
The Oscar-winning actress and stage and screen legend penned a blistering op-ed in The Times UK, arguing that its version of the truth is so far from the real thing that Netflix should have a disclaimer.
“The closer the drama comes to our present times, the more freely it seems willing to blur the lines between historical accuracy and crude sensationalism,” Dench wrote.
“Given some of the wounding suggestions apparently contained in the new series — that King Charles plotted for his mother to abdicate, for example, or once suggested his mother’s parenting was so deficient that she might have deserved a jail sentence — this is both cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent,” Dench continued. “No one is a greater believer in artistic freedom than I, but this cannot go unchallenged.”
Dench noted that the show has always been advertised as a “fictionalized drama,” but also pointed out that Netflix has resisted airing a disclaimer message. “The time has come for Netflix to reconsider — for the sake of a family and a nation so recently bereaved, as a mark of respect to a sovereign who served her people so dutifully for 70 years, and to preserve their own reputation in the eyes of their British subscribers,” she wrote.
Following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, The Crown put filming of Season 6 on pause, partly out of respect for the people who by and large don’t like the show’s lackadaisical approach to history. Indeed, Prince William reportedly raised a big stink over a Season 5 scene that depicted the BBC interview with Diana that led to then-Prince Charles’ affair with Camilla. Former PM John Majors also lashed out over its suggestion that Charles was nonplussed that his mom was still hanging onto the throne in the 1990s.
(Via The Times UK)
