Netflix adds disclaimer to The Crown trailer amid backlash

Virgin Radio

21 Oct 2022, 14:21

Netflix has added a disclaimed to its latest trailer for The Crown season five after facing backlash.

The new trailer for the highly anticipated fifth season of the hit Netflix show was released today (21st October) and at the beginning, it reads: “Inspired by real events, this fictional dramatisation tells the story of Queen Elizabeth II and the political and personal events that shaped her reign.”

With a dramatic cover of The Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony playing in the background, the trailer gives us a look at Imelda Staunton as the monarch alongside Jonathan Pryce as Prince Phillip.

The opening words set to scene for the fifth season and state: “The royal family is in genuine crisis.”

We also get a glimpse of Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana, who at one point can be heard saying: “People will never understand how it’s really been for me. I never stood a chance.”

It also outlines how The Crown will be tackling one of the most controversial moments for the Royal Family- Princess Diana’s Panorama interview with Martin Bashir.

This comes after Dame Judi Dench called for Netflix to introduce a “fictional drama disclaimer” to the series as a “mark of respect” to the late Queen Elizabeth II and the rest of the royal family.

In a letter written to The Times newspaper, the actress said The Crown represents “an inaccurate and hurtful account of history.”

She said: “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 — 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.

“No one is a greater believer in artistic freedom than I, but this cannot go unchallenged.”

Dame Judi also suggested Netflix should put a disclaimer ahead of new episodes in season five “for the sake of a family and a nation so recently bereaved.”

Series five of The Crown will land on Netflix on 9th November.