UK Government Wants "The Crown" to Include a Fiction Warning

There have been concerns that scenes are damaging to the royal family.

Season 4 of The Crown has officially landed on Netflix and to say it has been controversial would be an understatement.

In the new season, we finally get to meet Diana (Emma Corrin), which is something that a lot of viewers have been looking forward to. However, with her introduction also comes a lot of tough scenes to watch.

This season follows the royal family in the 1980s, depicting the tension between Queen Elizabeth (Olivia Colman) and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson) while Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor) begins a messy marriage with Lady Diana Spencer.

Netflix already has a trigger warning regarding images and references towards eating disorders but there have been calls to also include a ‘fiction warning'.

UK Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden told The Daily Mail that he demands that Netflix make it clear that the show is fiction.

“It's a beautifully produced work of fiction, so as with other TV productions, Netflix should be very clear at the beginning it is just that,” he said.

“Without this, I fear a generation of viewers who did not live through these events may mistake fiction for fact.”

Mr Dowden’s main concerns are that some scenes have been interpreted from the truth incorrectly and some are just altogether false. 

Sorry, I’ll stop talking about this soon but the Royals spending 20 years rehabilitating Charles’s image, only for one szn of The Crown to unravel it all and make the whole planet want to fight him is SENDING ME.

— Camilla Blackett (@camillard) November 29, 2020

Screenwriter and creator of the show Peter Morgan has called the show "an act of creative imagination". 

One of the scenes in concern includes the suggestion that the affair between Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles continued throughout his marriage to Diana.

Mr Dowden plans to write to Netflix to formally request that it adds a ‘health warning’ before each episode.

If all this drama has made the show seem that much more appealing, you can catch all four seasons on Netflix.

Header Image: Netflix