The Crown’ Season 5 Reportedly Raises Palace Anxiety Ahead Of Release Date

Netflix is moving forward with the release of the fifth season of The Crown, which will be available Nov. 9, just two months after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, prompting Buckingham Palace insiders to go on the defensive according to a British media report.

Now that Prince Charles has become King Charles, and the new season of the Netflix drama focuses on his contentious divorce with Princess Diana, those close to the king have “”moved to protect” him.

According to The Telegraph, a “senior royal source” wanted Netflix to convey a warning that “The Crown” is “a drama not a documentary.” And a friend of the king called the fifth season “exploitative” and that Netflix has “no qualms about mangling people’s reputations,” and “what people forget is that there are real human beings and real lives at the heart of this.”

There have been both positive and negative statements from sources close to all members of the royal family over the years regarding The Crown, and how their family is portrayed in it. They range from Charles, who apparently has never watched, to Camilla, who actually met and hung out with the actress who plays her. But heading into the period dealing with the height of the Diana years, with season 6 reportedly focused on her death, things may be about to escalate.

In the wake of the queen’s death, the showrunner called the series a “love letter” to Elizabeth. And more often than not, she is portrayed fairly evenly, though reportedly, the issues she took with the show were about things like Prince Philip appearing to be a poor or absent father, which she claims he was not.

The Crown is just going to be an entirely different experience in the wake of Elizabeth’s death and the fact that its new primary focus, Charles, is the actual king now. When The Crown ends after season 6, which is reported to be its last, it will span 60 total hours, and be far and away the most extensive representation of the queen and her entire family across all of media, unlikely to ever be topped in terms of total volume. So it really is how much of the world will have its perception shaped of both the queen, her accomplishments, her failures, her legacy, and that of her family. Charles, for instance, comes off as fairly sympathetic and thrust in over his head when he’s younger in the series, but later, in the Diana years, that’s much less the case.

I do not imagine that season 5 will pass without some manner of controversy once it’s actually airing, even we do know what’s being covered and the very public history of the early ‘90s when all this was taking place. We’ll see what the palace sources have to say then.

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