The controversial Netflix series The Crown is set to release its fifth season on November 9 which will cover the turmoil of the first half of the 1990s, ending in 1996.
Series five will largely focus on the breakdown of the marriage between Princess Diana and the then Prince Charles which will include the controversial Panorama interview, reports claim. It will also see the end of Prince Andrew’s marriage to Sarah Ferguson and Princess Anne’s marriage to Mark Phillips. Diana’s interview with disgraced journalist Martin Bashir was found to have increased Diana’s paranoia after it was concluded that Bashir used “deceitful methods” and breached BBC guidelines to scoop an interview with the Princess.
The then Princess of Wales famously said in that interview that there were “three of us” in her marriage to Charles. The teaser clip for the series shows Dominic West playing Charles, and Diana, played by Elizabeth Debicki preparing for their bombshell television interviews about their marriage. The clip features the voice of a fictional television reporter calling the situation “all-out war” as Charles’ interview with Jonathan Dimbleby covers the moment he admitted to his affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles.
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At the time of the revelations of the Bashir interview with Diana, Prince William publicly spoke out about the upsetting realities of the scandal. A source close to the Prince of Wales told The Telegraph that the Prince had made his feelings “very clear” about it and that The Crown’s depiction will be “met in the way you would expect”. In May 2021, William issued a personal statement from Kensington Palace to condemn the interview in which he said the interview should “never be aired again”.
He noted that there was no legitimacy to the interview which brought him “indescribable sadness” knowing that it contributed to his mother’s sense of “fear, paranoia and isolation”. Palace sources have suggested that William feels the streaming platform is profiteering from the dramatization and exploitation of his mother’s struggles. The director-general of the BBC, Tim Davie, vowed that the Panorama interview would not be aired again on the BBC in part or in full.
He also issued an apology to Charles, William and Prince Harry “for the way in which Princess Diana was deceived and the subsequent impact on all their lives”. The Palace will be preparing to be rocked by the upcoming series given the impact it has previously had on the reputation and popularity of certain members of the Royal Family, notably the new King.
A friend of Charles told The Telegraph that The Crown is “exploitative” and Netflix has “no qualms about mangling people’s reputations”. However, when The Crown began its creators vowed that it was not presenting itself as a docuseries and that viewers understand it is not wholly reality, a notion which has been contradicted by the backlash directed towards The Firm since the series aired.
