Andrew Marr has claimed that The Crown’s dramatisation of the royal family is “grossly unfair and sadistic”.
The historical drama returned to Netflix earlier this month, with the new season focusing on the relationship between the Queen (Olivia Colman) and newcomers Lady Diana Spencer (Emma Corrin) and Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson).
However, the show has come under criticism for featuring a number of fabricated plotlines, including one suggesting that Charles (Josh O’Connor) continued his affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles (Emerald Fennell) throughout his marriage to Diana.
Speaking to The Sun, TV presenter Marr said: “If they announced, ‘This is drama, it’s fiction, it’s entertainment’, you would say it’s brilliant.
“But when you start to say, ‘This is the truth about these people’s lives’, it’s grossly unfair and really quite sadistic. It’s so convincingly acted people may think it’s the truth, and it isn’t.”
Marr added: “If I was one of the Royal Family, I would be utterly, utterly horrified.’
In the wake of The Crown season four airing, the Duchess of Cornwall has received an influx of online abuse, with a photo shared on the Clarence House Instagram last Friday (20 November), receiving thousands of comments from irate Crown fans.
The series’s creator Peter Morgan has spoken out recently in defence of the decision to invent a fictitious exchange in which Lord Mountbatten (Charles Dance) condemns Charles for pursuing Camilla romantically.
Morgan said: “In my own head I thought that would have even greater impact on Charles if it were to come post-mortem, as it were.
“I think everything that’s in that letter that Mountbatten writes to Charles is what I really believe, based on everything I’ve read and people I’ve spoken to, that represents his view.
“We will never know if it was put into a letter, and we will never know if Charles got that letter before or after Mountbatten’s death, but in this particular drama, this is how I decided to deal with it.”
The Crown is available to stream on Netflix now.
