Yahoo News Netflix adds disclaimer about historical accuracy to The Crown season 5 trailer
Netflix has issued a decree about The Crown's take on real-life events.
The new trailer for season 5 of the Emmy-winning series includes a disclaimer about the accuracy of the program's retelling of the British royal family's lives following Dame Judi Dench's scathing critique of the show for taking creative liberties while chronicling actual people's experiences.
"Inspired by real events, this fictional dramatisation tells the story of Queen Elizabeth II and the political and personal events that shaped her reign," reads the trailer's description on YouTube. "It's a new decade, and the royal family are facing what may be their biggest challenge yet: proving their continued relevance in '90s Britain. As Diana and Charles wage a media war, cracks begin to splinter the royal foundation."
Dench, who won an Oscar for her role in Shakespeare in Love, was previously appointed as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1988. Though she said the royal family did not encourage her to speak out against the program, the open letter she released addressing the series labeled it a "brilliant but fictionalized account of events."
She wrote that she feared "a significant number of viewers, particularly overseas, may take its version of history as being wholly true," calling it both "cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent."
The trailer for 'The Crown' season 5 includes a disclaimer about historical accuracy.
The 87-year-old actress also pointed to the recent death of Queen Elizabeth II (who's portrayed by Imelda Staunton in season 5) as a reason why the production should be mindful of its rollout of the program.
"I'll say that Peter [Morgan] and the entire crew of this job do their utmost to really handle everything with such sensitivity and truth and complexity, as do actors," Elizabeth Debicki, who portrays the late Princess Diana in season 5, recently told EW of the show's handling of true events. "The amount of research and care and conversations and dialogue that happen over, from a viewer's perspective, something probably that you would never, ever notice is just immense. From that very first meeting [with] Peter, I knew that I'd entered into this space where this was taken seriously [in] a deeply caring way. So that's my experience of the show."
The Crown — which also stars Dominic West, Lesley Manville, and Jonathan Pryce — premieres Nov. 9 on Netflix.
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