Dame Judi Dench has penned an open letter to British paper The Times criticizing Netflix’s “The Crown” series for its “cruelly unjust” depiction of the British royal family.
The Oscar-winning actress makes it clear she supports artistic freedom, and urges Netflix to add a disclaimer to each episode stressing to viewers that the show is a fictionalized account of historical events.
“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.
Given some of the wounding suggestions apparently contained in the new series… 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.
The streamer this week has been on the defensive, stating publicly their series very much a fictionalized drama based on historical events. But, as Dench points out, the show’s makers have resisted all calls for them to carry a disclaimer at the start of each episode to date:
“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”
Dench’s letter was published ahead of the show’s fifth season which launches on the service in early November and covers some of the royal family’s most tumultuous years in the 1990s.
