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

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

“The difficulty is that individuals, particularly in America, consider it utterly. It’s so irritating,” Woman Anne Glenconner, a longtime good friend of Her Majesty, mentioned throughout an look on BBC Radio 4’s “Ladies’s Hour” on Thursday, November 24. “I don’t watch The Crown now as a result of it simply makes me so indignant. And it’s so unfair on members of the royal household.”

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 “full 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 dying on the age of 96 — and Princess Diana. The most recent batch of episodes additionally featured Diana — who died in a 1997 deadly Paris automobile 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.

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

“The nearer the drama involves our current occasions, the extra freely it appears prepared to blur the traces between historic accuracy and crude sensationalism,” Judi Dench wrote in an open letter to The Occasions final month, asking Netflix so as to add a dramatized disclaimer to the brand new episodes. “Nobody is a larger believer in creative freedom than I, however this can not go unchallenged.”

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

“I imply, it’s a drama. It’s not a documentary. That’s been mentioned about 10 million occasions. Not all the things in it will be genuine,” The Queen: Her Life writer solely advised Us Weekly earlier this month. “[Watching season 5] was like being transported again in time. It was fairly unnerving, fairly frankly, as a result of the lady who performs Diana — Elizabeth Debicki — completely nailed all the things about her mannerisms, her gestures, her speech patterns. … I used to be form of shaking actually with the verisimilitude of all of it.”

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

“I noticed Helena [Bonham Carter] after she’d been in The Crown [as Princess Margaret in seasons 3 and 4] and she or he mentioned, ‘What did you suppose?’ And I mentioned, ‘Properly, reasonably upset,’” Glenconner, who served as a lady-in-waiting to Margaret earlier than her 2002 dying, recalled to the BBC on Thursday. “And she or he mentioned, ‘I do know. However the factor is, I’m an actress, and I’ve to do what’s written for me.’”

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