All ‘The Crown’ Season 6 Outrage So Far—Without One Second Being Broadcast

The Crown, Netflix’s astonishing, epic chronicle of the British royal family, returns to our screens for a sixth and concluding series on Nov. 16.

Despite the fact that only a tiny contingent of insiders have as yet seen the final series, this hasn’t stopped a steady stream of leaks and speculation about the content of the new series coming into the public domain. The most shocking and sensational storylines are expected to relate to the death of Princess Diana, whose tragic death forms the emotional and narrative fulcrum of series six.

The ways that Peter Morgan, the show’s creator and chief writer, has chosen to narrate this remarkable slice of British history have been the subject of huge criticism, before so much as a single second has aired.

Morgan gave an interview to Variety last week in which he cautioned those making criticisms of the show before it transmits.

He said: “All the criticism about The Crown’s attitude to the royals comes in anticipation of the show coming out. The minute it’s out and people look at it—whether it’s Judi Dench [who described a scene in which (King) Charles says his mother’s parenting was so deficient that she might have deserved a jail sentence as “cruelly unjust…and damaging to the institution”] or John Major [the former British prime minister who called the show “malicious fiction” over a fictional scene in which Charles sought his support for getting his mother to abdicate]— they instantly fall silent. And I think they probably feel rather stupid.”

Reuters

Morgan also discussed reports that Diana’s ghost will appear in the new series, a rumor he dismissed, saying that Diana’s appearance for a tender post-mortem conversation with Charles is a narrative device, common enough in film, not a haunting.

But how The Crown covers Diana’s death is still likely to be hugely controversial, because The Crown has unarguably become, while not the definitive historical account of royal history, a powerful and pervasive take on it.

Hence, for example, there was consternation this week when it emerged in a report in British tabloid The Sun that the show will give airtime to Mohamed Al-Fayed’s incendiary allegation that Princess Diana was pregnant when she died.

Netflix

There has also been enormous speculation over how The Crown will portray the moment of Diana’s death. Morgan insisted he would not and had “never” planned to show the crash itself. At the Edinburgh TV Festival earlier this year, executive producer Suzanne Mackie said they filmed the passing of Diana (played by Elizabeth Debicki) with “enormous sensitivity,” saying: “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… The audience will judge it in the end, but I think it’s been delicately, thoughtfully recreated.”

Photographs sneaked off set have showed a perfect prop reproduction of the post-crash Mercedes in which Diana was traveling when she was killed being pored over by forensic scientists. The crushed and disfigured car, with a wheel hanging off at an angle, is perhaps one of the most recognizable wrecks in the world.

One source told the Mail of the new prop, “I think a lot of people will find it quite sick that they went into such detail to recreate how the car was smashed up. I think it’s going to cause a lot of upset with the Royal Family. If it was any other family, I’m not sure they’d do it.”

Keith Bernstein/Netflix

Much of the focus of British tabloid outrage has been anchored in how such moments might affect Diana’s sons. Some might argue that a campaign by the British tabloids to not upset the Wales brothers rings a little hollow.

The other line of attack is that Prince Harry is a hypocrite because he and Meghan Markle signed a multi-million dollar development deal with Netflix. But if anyone expects Harry to tear up his contract with the streaming giant in response to Series 6 of The Crown, they should prepare to be disappointed. Nonetheless, it is an extraordinary twist of fate that Harry, the great privacy campaigner, works for a company that is selling the death of his mother, not to mention his own childhood misery, as entertainment.

Netflix

It will be fascinating to see if The Crown goes easy on Harry, and if it gets criticized for doing so. The signs are that Harry might be getting a fairly free ride in the upcoming series. Morgan said he hadn’t read Harry’s memoir, Spare, and argued that his principal interest is the direct line of succession, saying in Variety: “I do little bits of dramatization of Harry but mainly only in relationship to (Prince) William.”

Morgan also made the point that there is plenty of scandal The Crown could have covered but left well alone. He told Variety: “We once wrote down all the things that we hadn’t put in The Crown. Speculation about paternity, affairs, this, that. It’s unbelievable, all we could have written.”

Andrew Matthews/Pool via Reuters

Indeed, when the curtain falls on the final episode in December, it is quite likely that what the vast majority of fans will be complaining about is not what liberties the series might have taken with the literal truth—Diana and Dodi (Al-Fayed)’s conversations as they hang out on his yacht, Queen Elizabeth’s agonizingly slow response to Diana’s death (a subject Morgan covered masterfully in his script for the 2006 film The Queen) or the atmosphere at Balmoral in those chaotic days after the crash—but what was not covered.

The show will end, if reports are to be believed, with now-Queen Camilla’s triumph as she marries Charles in 2005.

This means that while William and Kate Middleton’s meeting at St Andrew’s university will be included, there will not be so much as a flash of Meghan Markle, not even a hint or foreshadowing of the second most extraordinary story to afflict the royals in the past 50 years—the acrimonious departure of the Sussexes from the royal fold.

Like any good showman, Morgan might argue, he is leaving the stage with the audience wanting more. But, then again, originally The Crown was going to have just five seasons­—so who knows? The greatest dramatization of the world’s most famous family might yet have an encore.

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