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Judi Dench Urges Netflix Disclaimer on "Cruelly Unjust" The Crown

Published Wed, 19 Oct 2022 16:25:11 -0500

With well less than a month to go until Netflix and series creator & writer Peter Morgan's The Crown returns for its fifth season, famed actress Judi Dench has penned an open letter to The Times UK to call out the series for its willingness to, as she writes, "blur the lines between historical accuracy and crude sensationalism." Set to return on November 9th, the new season sees the Royal Family enter a new decade facing what could be their biggest challenge yet: justifying their role in '90s Britain. Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth II, Jonathan Pryce as Prince Philip, Lesley Manville as Princess Margaret, Dominic West as Prince Charles, Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana, Claudia Harrison as Princess Anne, Olivia Williams as Camilla Parker Bowles, Jonny Lee Miller as John Major, Salim Daw as Mohamed Al Fayed, and Khalid Abdalla as Dodi Fayed star.

"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 in the piece, urging Netflix to add a disclaimer ahead of each episode emphasizing that the series is a fictional accounting of historical events. "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. No one is a greater believer in artistic freedom than I, but this cannot go unchallenged," Dench argued.

"Despite this week stating publicly that 'The Crown' has always been a 'fictionalized drama,' the program 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 their own reputation in the eyes of their British subscribers." For their part, Netflix doesn't see the need for a disclaimer ahead of each episode. "We have always presented 'The Crown' as a drama – and we have every confidence our members understand it's a work of fiction that's broadly based on historical events. As a result, we have no plans — and see no need — to add a disclaimer," the streamer responded in a statement.

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