When this Hollywood star has something to say, you better believe that everyone in the room is going to sit up and listen. Judi Dench has called for a disclaimer to be added to each episode of The Crown, saying the hit Netflix drama has begun to verge on “crude sensationalism.” Here’s what she has to say.
The screen and stage veteran said despite previous statements by the streaming giant that the show is a “fictionalized drama,” there was a risk that “a significant number of viewers” would take its events as historical truth. She added that “wounding suggestions apparently contained in the new series” would prove “damaging” to the monarchy and could not go unchallenged.
Netflix The Crown Spoilers: Judi Dench Has Some Choice Words For The Series
Dench made the remarks in a letter to The Times, following previous concerns voiced by former British prime minister John Major, about the content of The Crown’s highly anticipated fifth series, which will launch on November 9th. Major is said to have described the upcoming scenes, which reportedly depict the King, then the Prince of Wales, plotting to oust the Queen, as “malicious nonsense.”
It is expected to show Charles cutting short a holiday with Diana, Princess of Wales, to host a secret meeting with Major at Highgrove in 1991. “Sir John Major is not alone in his concerns that the latest series of The Crown will present an inaccurate and hurtful account of history,” Dench wrote. “Indeed, 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 said that the suggestions expected to be made in the new series were “cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent.”
She continued: “No one is a greater believer in artistic freedom than I, but this cannot go unchallenged. Despite this week stating publicly that The Crown has always been a ‘fictionalized drama’, the programme makers have resisted all calls for them to carry a disclaimer at the start of each episode. 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 its reputation in the eyes of its British subscribers.”
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