Not a documentary. Princess Diana‘s brother Earl Charles Spencer wants viewers to understand that The Crown isn’t an accurate portrayal of the real-life royal drama.
The White Ship author, 56, appears as a guest on the Sunday, November 22, episode of Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh, where he discussed his feelings on the show’s accuracy. In a preview clip, Spencer said he drew the line when The Crown wanted to film at his family home.
“There is a bit. Actually, The Crown asked if they could film at Althorp, and I said ‘Obviously not,'” he recalled.
Spencer added that he’s concerned viewers believe that the hit series is an accurate retelling of events.
“The worry for me is that people see a program like that and they forget that it is fiction,” he said. “They assume, especially foreigners, I find Americans tell me they have watched The Crown as if they have taken a history lesson. Well, they haven’t.”
Spencer continued, “It is very hard, there is a lot of conjecture and a lot of invention, isn’t there? You can hang it on fact but the bits in between are not fact.”
The Crown creator Peter Morgan told The Times on Friday, November 20, that he took some liberties with the material.
“We do our very, very best to get it right, but sometimes I have to conflate [incidents],” the screenwriter, 57, said. “You sometimes have to forsake accuracy, but you must never forsake truth.”
The fourth season of the Netflix drama follows Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor) and Diana’s (Emma Corrin) tumultuous relationship. The pair tied the knot in July 1981 and had two children, Prince William and Prince Harry. Charles and Diana separated in 1992 and announced their divorce four years later after they both admitted to extramarital affairs. The princess died at the age of 36 in a car crash in Paris in August 1997.
Spencer told Alan Titchmarsh that he isn’t afraid to set the record straight in “honor” of Diana’s “memory.”
“I feel it is my duty to stand up for her when I can,” he said. “She left me, for instance, as guardian of her sons, so I feel there was a trust passed on. And we grew up together. If you grow up with somebody they are still that person — it doesn’t matter what happens to them later.”
