The Queen’s Pal Lady Glenconner Says ‘The Crown’ Is ‘Irritating’

The Crown chronicles Queen Elizabeth II’s 70-year reign on the Netflix sequence, however a few of the late monarch’s family members should not followers of the fictionalized drama.

“The trouble is that people, especially in America, believe it completely. It’s so irritating,” Lady Anne Glenconner, a longtime good friend of Her Majesty, stated throughout an look on BBC Radio 4’s “Women’s Hour” on Thursday, November 24. “I don’t watch The Crown now because it just makes me so angry. And it’s so unfair on members of the royal family.”

The 90-year-old England native — who served as a maid of honor on the queen’s 1947 nuptials to Prince Philip — additional referred to as the five-season drama a “complete fantasy” concerning the accuracy of its story traces.

The Crown season 5 dropped on the streaming big earlier this month, highlighting the dissolution of the wedding between King Charles III — who succeeded Elizabeth in September after her loss of life on the age of 96 — and Princess Diana. The newest batch of episodes additionally featured Diana — who died in a 1997 deadly Paris automotive crash — working with Andrew Morton on his biography about her life earlier than sitting down with the BBC’s Panorama for a tell-all interview amid Charles’ romance with Queen Consort Camilla. Imelda Staunton and Jonathan Pryce star because the queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, who died in April 2021, on The Crown season 5. Dominic West and Elizabeth Debicki, for his or her components, painting Charles and Diana.

Ahead of season 5’s debut on the streaming service, The Crown got here underneath fireplace over claims of historic inaccuracy.

“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,” Judi Dench wrote in an open letter to The Times final month, asking Netflix so as to add a dramatized disclaimer to the brand new episodes. “No one is a greater believer in artistic freedom than I, but this cannot go unchallenged.”

While Netflix finally complied with the 87-year-old Oscar winner’s request amid backlash, Andrew Morton thought the disclaimer was “ridiculous.”

“I mean, it is a drama. It’s not a documentary. That’s been said about 10 million times. Not everything in it is going to be authentic,” The Queen: Her Life creator solely instructed Us Weekly earlier this month. “[Watching season 5] was like being transported back in time. It was quite unnerving, quite frankly, because the woman who plays Diana — Elizabeth Debicki — absolutely nailed everything about her mannerisms, her gestures, her speech patterns. … I was kind of shaking really with the verisimilitude of it all.”

While Morton discovered The Crown nailed his involvement in Diana’s story, Glenconner was much less enthused.

“I saw Helena [Bonham Carter] after she’d been in The Crown [as Princess Margaret in seasons 3 and 4] and she said, ‘What did you think?’ And I said, ‘Well, rather disappointed,’” Glenconner, who served as a lady-in-waiting to Margaret earlier than her 2002 loss of life, recalled to the BBC on Thursday. “And she said, ‘I know. But the thing is, I’m an actress, and I have to do what’s written for me.’”

Neither The Crown nor creator Peter Morgan have addressed Glenconner’s criticism. The sequence is presently in manufacturing on the sixth and remaining season.