KEY POINTS
- Lady Anne Glenconner said the trouble with Netflix’s “The Crown” is that people believe it completely
- Glenconner, who served as a maid of honor at the Queen’s coronation, said she doesn’t watch the show
- She claimed that some of the scenes in the series “never happened” in real life
A longtime friend of Queen Elizabeth II has slammed “The Crown” following the release of Season 5 earlier this month.
Lady Anne Glenconner, who was a maid of honor at the late Queen’s coronation in June 1953, spoke to BBC Radio 4’s “Woman’s Hour” Thursday about the hit Netflix drama, describing the show as a “complete fantasy,” People reported.
“[It’s] so unfair on members of the Royal Family,” said Lady Glenconner, who also served as Princess Margaret’s lady-in-waiting for over three decades.
“The trouble is that people, especially in America, believe it completely,” she noted. “It’s so irritating. I don’t watch ‘The Crown’ now because it just makes me so angry.”
Glenconner, 90, pointed out some moments in the series that she was upset about, such as a scene involving the death of Prince Philip’s sister, Princess Cecile of Greece, in a plane crash in 1937.
The event was featured in the second season and portrayed the late Duke of Edinburgh as urging his sister to board the doomed flight, which Glenconner claimed was “completely untrue.”
“And I think to say something like that about people is terribly hurting,” she added. “Nobody wants to have their relations trashed like that.”
Glenconner also criticized how the show featured Princess Margaret creating rude rhymes with President Lyndon B. Johnson and debating the qualities of various eligible men, insisting that this “never happened” in real life.
Glenconner also disapproved of the way Helena Bonham Carter portrayed Princess Margaret. The actress played the character for two seasons and even visited Glenconner for advice.
“She came for about two hours. I told her how Princess Margaret smoked, how she walked,” said Glenconner.
She continued, “I saw Helena after she’d been in ‘The Crown’ and she said, ‘What did you think?’ And I said, ‘Well, rather disappointed.’ And she said, ‘I know. But the thing is, I’m an actress, and I have to do what’s written for me.'”
Glenconner’s remarks came after several high-profile figures called out Netflix over “The Crown.” Dame Judi Dench penned an open letter to U.K.’s The Times in October, arguing that it would be “cruelly unjust” not to preface each episode with a statement pointing out that the program is a work of historical fiction.
Following the criticism, Netflix has promoted “The Crown” as a “fictional dramatization” and included a disclaimer stating that the show is “Inspired by real events.”
True Royalty TV editor-in-chief Nick Bullen also recently claimed that some storylines on the series about Princess Diana and King Charles were not accurate.
“Look, it’s drama. It’s fiction that’s somewhat based on fact,” the royal expert told Us Weekly. “Virtually all of it was — certainly — sort of widened the mark.”
