Judi Dench Slams ‘The Crown,’ Calling It ‘Cruelly Unjust’ to Royals
YOU’VE BEEN DENCHED
The Dench intervention appears to be in reaction to the news that the Netflix series will depict a fictionalized scene showing Charles musing about his mother’s abdication.
Dame Judi Dench is running a full-court press against Netflix’s The Crown ahead of its highly anticipated fifth season, calling the show “crude” and “cruelly unjust” to the royal family it depicts, warts and all. In a scorching letter to The Times of London published Wednesday, Dench asserted that the Emmy-winning series risks straying toward “an inaccurate and hurtful account of history” as its timeline inches closer to the present day. The forthcoming season will depict the fracturing of then-Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s marriage, including a fictionalized scene where Charles floats a plan to get his mother to abdicate the throne. Calling this a “wounding” insult, Dench growls in her letter that “this is both cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent.” She should know—not only is Dench a close chum to Queen Consort Camilla, she was made a Companion of Honour to the late Queen Elizabeth II in 2005. “No one is a greater believer in artistic freedom than I, but this cannot go unchallenged,” the British national treasure wrote.
