Helena Bonham Carter Doesn’t Think ‘The Crown’ Should ‘Carry on’ Anymore: ‘It’s Very Different Now’
“When ‘The Crown’ started it was a historical drama and now it’s plunged into the present,” said the series graduate.
Helena Bonham Carter doesn’t think The Crown should keep quiet and move on.
The Netflix series alum admitted the show is “very different now” as it approaches modern times. Season 5 has already explored the darker side of Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s marriage, and after Prince Harry’s reveal film Spare, Carter questioned the future of the series.
“I don’t really want to contribute to the whole thing,” Carter told the Guardian when asked to respond to Harry’s book. “It’s complicated and taken out of context. And I think that has been given enough attention.”
Carter, who played Harry’s great-aunt Princess Margaret on The Crown, added to the series: “I should be careful here too, but I don’t think they should actually go ahead. I’m in and I’ve loved my episodes, but now it’s very different. When The Crown began it was a historical drama, and now it plunges into the present. But that’s up to them.”
Claims that Season 5 of the Netflix show was “exploitative” towards now-King Charles prompted the cast to defend the series. Jonathan Pryce asked if the recent criticism came “due to heightened sensitivity due to the Queen’s death,” and Lesley Manville, who took over the role of Princess Margaret from Carter, said the series didn’t “cross a line” at all.
Judi Dench, who has never appeared on The Crown, called the final season “cruelly unfair to individuals and harmful” to the royal family as a whole. “Nobody believes in artistic freedom more than I do,” Dench said, “but that can’t go unchallenged.”
Dench added, “Although it was publicly stated this week that ‘The Crown’ has always been a ‘fictionalized drama,’ the program makers have resisted all requests to publish a disclaimer at the beginning of each episode. It’s time Netflix reconsidered — for the sake of a family and a nation that has recently suffered a bereavement, as a mark of respect for a sovereign who has served her people so dutifully for 70 years, and to uphold her reputation in the eyes of her British subscribers.”
Netflix finally added a disclaimer to the series: “Inspired by real events, this fictional dramatization tells the story of Queen Elizabeth II and the political and personal events that shaped her reign.”
The final two seasons of The Crown span the 1990s through 2003, with season 6 containing the death of Princess Diana, which Netflix says will not be shown on screen.
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