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Calls for Netflix to show disclaimers before each episode of the upcoming fifth season of The Crown "wouldn't make a difference" in the eyes of the public because the worst of what's portrayed really did happen, Newsweek's The Royal Report podcast has heard.
In the latest episode, chief royal correspondent Jack Royston and royal commentator Kristen Meinzer addressed the ongoing calls for streaming giant Netflix to make clear to viewers that the events recreated for The Crown aren't based wholly on fact.
The hit series, chronicling the life and reign of Queen Elizabeth II and her close family members, debuted in 2016 and will release its fifth season on November 9.
In the lead up to its release, a number of public figures, including some represented as characters in the season, have denounced the show and writer Peter Morgan.
The prominent voices have included former U.K. Prime Minister Sir John Major and Oscar-winning actress Dame Judi Dench.
Major, who was prime minister in the early 1990s, the decade in which the season is set, called descriptions of scenes in which he will appear "damaging and malicious fiction" and "a barrel-load of nonsense peddled for no other reason than to provide maximum—and entirely false—dramatic impact," per The Telegraph.
Dench said that for the benefit of viewers overseas, Netflix's inaccurate portrayal of real life events "cannot go unchallenged," adding that the streaming giant should reconsider its stance on not displaying a disclaimer.
"Current cast members of The Crown have pushed back against Dench and Major's assertions," Meinzer highlighted.
"Jonathan Pryce who plays Prince Philip told Deadline 'The vast majority of people know it's a drama. They've been watching it for four seasons."
"In a separate interview, Leslie Manville who plays Princess Margaret in the new season said that: 'Given The Crown's focus on what goes on behind closed doors, the writers can only create an event obviously.' She added, 'I wouldn't be involved with something I felt was crossing a line, I don't think the series does that at all.'"
To this, Royston said that the show's writers and producers faced an impossible task in appeasing all audiences, he also added that for those objecting on the grounds that fictionalizing scenes may make the royals look bad, the worst things depicted in the season are the events that are known to have happened.
"It's impossible to make a show like this without fictionalizing some aspects of it," he told Meinzer. "Because nobody knows what characters said to one another, but equally the most damaging aspects of this season for the monarchy are, in all honesty, the bits that are true.
"That Charles did cheat on Diana, their relationship did disintegrate...the interview that Diana gave to the BBC is on record, it very closely echoes what she said to her biographer Andrew Morton, and it's all there in black and white, predating the very existence of The Crown."
At the beginning of the new season, scenes will document the events that contributed to one of the most troubled years of the late queen's reign, one she herself labeled her "annus horribilis" (terrible year).
These events included Princess Diana's collaboration on the bombshell biography Diana: Her True Story; the royal's separation from Prince Charles; Sarah Ferguson's toe-sucking scandal; Princess Anne's divorce and the great fire at Windsor Castle.
The overarching conflict of the new season of The Crown and the 1990s in Britain though was the breakdown of Charles and Diana's marriage, where both were engaged in what was known as the "War of the Waleses".
"A lot of these allegations date back to 1992, 1994, 1995, it's all there, it happened at the time," said Royston.
"It's also really clear that what happened at that time was that Charles went, in 1991, from being loved by many people—81 percent thought he would make a good king—and then he crashed really hard after the affair [with Camilla Parker Bowles] became public knowledge and his reputation has never reached those 1980s levels in the years since."
"So, people can protest as much as they want," he concluded, "[Netflix] could put a disclaimer at the beginning of the show if they wanted, it wouldn't make the blindest bit of a difference."
In summing up, Meinzer highlighted that the show's producers had seemingly made a concession to those calling for a disclaimer.
"The current trailers that are out there in the world do say 'fictional dramatization' right there in the trailers," she said, highlighting that "if you go to the show's Twitter page it says right there 'inspired by real events, this fictionalized dramatization tells the story of Queen Elizabeth II and the political and personal events that shaped her reign,' that is two uses of the word fictional...so I don't know why people are in such an uproar."
Season 5 of The Crown is available to stream on Netflix from November 9.
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About the writer
James Crawford-Smith is a Newsweek Royal Reporter, based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on the British royal family ... Read more