Netflix's final season of The Crown has been criticized by Queen Elizabeth II's former press secretary for being insensitive regarding Princess Diana's death, Deadline exclusive reported.
Dickie Arbiter, who was the late queen's spokesperson from 1988 to 2000, said The Crown creator Peter Morgan took dramatic license too far. He disapproved of the the scene where Prince Charles (Dominic West) tells sons Princes William and Harry of Princess Diana's (Elizabeth Debicki) death.
Arbiter to Netflix's The Crown: Insensitive and unnecessary
“The sequence of Charles telling his sons of their mother’s death was so insensitive, it was so unnecessary,” Arbiter told Deadline.
“The death of their mother is still raw with both of them,” he continued.
Arbiter insisted, “The scenes between Charles and his mother, in which he blurted out that she wanted Diana to come back in a Harrods van were absolute nonsense. It just didn’t happen like that.”
“Of course an aircraft was going to be made available [to bring her body home from France]. The Queen was the first one to agree to that,” he stated. Arbiter worked with the late queen when the events unfolded.
He also contradicted what happened in the show with regard to Diana's funeral. According to Arbiter, it was the ninth Earl Spencer Charles Spencer, the princess' younger brother, who wanted a public ceremony.
“I was in charge and media arrangements for that week,” Arbiter stated.
“Spencer thought that because Diana was a public figure, because she was very popular and people adored her, that it should be something handled by the royal family to make it a public event rather than a private family event,” he explained.
Prince William's disappearance for 14 hours at Balmoral Castle after he learned about his mother's death also didn't happen, Arbiter said. However, he admitted that the princes went for walks to deal with their grief.
One other point of contention for the former press secretary was the additional of Diana's “ghost,” calling it an act of “desperation.
The Crown executive producer Suzanne Mackie previously said, “The show might be big and noisy, but we’re not. We’re thoughtful people and we’re sensitive people. There were very careful, long conversations about how we were going to do it.”
‘Heavily embellished'
Morgan, the show's creator and writer, said that he never claimed the series was a faithful depiction of the royals' history. He has also said that his writing in interspersed with “acts of imagination” alongside real-life events.
Arbiter has long been a critic of the show and insisted that audiences “believe every word of it” and that the streaming platform should have added a disclaimer to say that the show is heavily embellished.
Netflix has not commented on his accusations.
“I don't think it's damaged the royals. What it has done is people get a sort of jaundiced view of what the characters were actually like,” Arbiter concluded.
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