Actress Helena Bonham Carter recently insisted that the Netflix drama, The Crown, should be ended because it has strayed from an “historic drama” to a modern fictionalization. Carter, who starred as Queen Elizabeth II’s younger sister Princess Margaret in the third and fourth seasons, feels that the show has gone from quasi historical topics to pure drama that has not connection to the real world of Britain’s royal family.
The recent fifth season of the series took the show out of history and into the modern era to cover such topics as the relationship of Princess Diana and Prince Charles. Lesley Manville took over the role of Princess Margaret for that season.
But Carter thinks the series has gone past its due date.
“I should be careful here too, but I don’t think they should carry on, actually,” Bonham Carter said, according to Variety. “I’m in it and I loved my episodes, but it’s very different now. When ‘The Crown’ started it was a historic drama, and now it’s crashed into the present. But that’s up to them.”
This is not the first time that Carter criticized the series. In 2021, she spoke out about the confusion of what is historically based and what is made up “drama” in the series.
“It is dramatized,” Bonham Carter said during a podcast for the series. “I do feel very strongly, because I think we have a moral responsibility to say, ‘Hang on guys, this is not… it’s not a drama-doc, we’re making a drama.’ So they are two different entities.”
The series has taken much criticism for this blurring of history into fiction, too. Indeed, in 2020, a member of the British government spoke out to warn that the series is fiction, not fact.
“I fear a generation of viewers who did not live through these events may mistake fiction for fact,” UK culture secretary Oliver Dowden told the Daily Mail.
“Without this, I fear a generation of viewers who did not live through these events may mistake fiction for fact,” he added.
Acclaimed actress Judi Dench also trashed the series for the “cruelly unjust” fiction in an open letter in which she called for the streaming giant to add a disclaimer to each episode.
“The Crown will present an inaccurate and hurtful account of history,” Dench exclaimed. “Indeed, 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.”
Ultimately, Netflix did add a disclaimer to its fifth season after angry viewers panned the series for taking such base liberties with its portrayal of real, living members of the royal family.
The disclaimer reads: “Inspired by real events, this fictional dramatization tells the story of Queen Elizabeth II and the political and personal events that shaped her reign.”
Netflix has announced that it has given the greenlight to the sixth season of The Crown, which is scheduled to be its final season. An air date has not yet been determined.
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