Netflix has now added a disclaimer to its latest trailer for The Crown following an open letter from Dame Judi Dench to The Times accusing the series of “crude sensationalism” and calling for a more obvious statement about the fictionalization that’s gone into the historical drama.
In the YouTube description below the Season 5 trailer, Netflix now writes, “Inspired by real events, this fictional dramatisation tells the story of Queen Elizabeth II and the political and personal events that shaped her reign.” The disclaimer, first reported by The Daily Mail, is the first of its kind for the show’s YouTube presence, although Netflix does already note its fictionalization in press materials, on social media and the series’ landing page on the streamer.
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The highly-anticipated royal drama has faced a number of challenges following the death of Queen Elizabeth II on Sept. 8, which halted filming on The Crown briefly during the country’s official mourning period. Then earlier this week, Dench spoke out publicly calling for greater transparency about the historical accuracy surrounding the show.
“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, 87, wrote. She continued, “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.”
While “no one is a greater believer in artistic freedom” than Dench, she wrote that it was time for Netflix to “reconsider” previous resistance to adding a disclaimer to 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,” she concluded.
A Netflix spokesperson maintained that “The Crown has always been presented as a drama based on historical events,” continuing, “Series five is a fictional dramatisation, imagining what could have happened behind closed doors during a significant decade for the Royal Family – one that has already been scrutinised and well documented by journalists, biographers and historians.”
Season 5 begins in the early 1990s after the time of Margaret Thatcher as Princess Diana and then-Prince Charles was at its breaking point. Joining the show this season are Imelda Staunton, Elizabeth Debicki and Dominic West, who will replace Olivia Colman, Emma Corrin and Josh O’Connor. Jonny Lee Miller will play British Prime Minister John Major.
