The Crown should carry fiction warning: Culture Secretary speaks out

The Crown has been the focus of adoration for many of us who enjoy feasting on the lavish outfits and drama surrounding the royal family. But, at the same time, the show has also been on the receiving end of a lot of criticism for their made-up events.

Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden has weighed in on the famous show after many reports of fictional scenes.

While The Crownmay have set out to tell the story of the hardships of the royal family,they have also managed to slip a few events into the show that never existed. Take, for example, Lord Mountbatten’s letter to Prince Charles.

The depiction of the famous characters on the show has some royal family members fuming and Dowden is now calling for the show to sport some kind of warning to make sure viewers know that the show is fictional. He told the Mail on Sunday:

I fear a generation of viewers who did not live through these events may mistake fiction for fact.

Dowden did claim that the ‘beautifully produced work of fiction... should be very clear at the beginning it is just that’.

The Culture Secretary did say he intended to write a letter to Netflix about the issue after the creator of the show, Peter Morgan labelled The Crown as an ‘act of creative imagination’.

The fourth series of the show which has recently greeted our Netflix accounts have gained somecriticism over the portrayal of Princess Diana and Prince Charles’ relationship and it’s inevitable downfall.

However, Dowden isn’t the only one who has shown concern for the show’s fictionality as Diana’s brother has also made a point to comment on the issue. Earl Spencer spoke to ITV’s Lorraine Kelly:

I think it would help The Crown an enormous amount if, at the beginning of each episode, it stated that: 'This isn't true but it is based around some real events.

Josh O’Connor, who plays Prince Charles in the show also spoke about Morgan’s creation and claimed that the audience needs to understand that it is just a television show. He told BBC Breakfast:

What Peter does so brilliantly is he takes the historical facts... and then paints in between those 'punctuation moments'. Sometimes people will want to believe this is what happened. It's always worth checking in and remembering that we're actors, we're not real and it's not a real story.