‘It made me forget about colonialism’: what Generation Z really thinks of The Crown

The new season of The Crown, starring Elizabeth Dibicki as Diana, has already scandalised the nation - Netflix
The new season of The Crown, starring Elizabeth Dibicki as Diana, has already scandalised the nation - Netflix
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“It feels it’s all about to erupt.” So says John Major (played by Jonny Lee Miller) in the new series of The Crown which, charting Princess Diana’s spiralling marriage and her then-husband Prince Charles’s alleged attempts to oust his mother from the throne, has got controversy written all over it. For most viewers, this latest retelling evokes the royal fallouts of decades past.

But for Gen Z – those aged under 26 who make up the youngest tranche of its audience – controversies from “tampongate” to the Martin Bashir interview that instigated the royal divorce are entirely new. Indeed many teens and early twentysomethings are learning as each series progresses; The Crown a bingeable box set history lesson with beautiful costumes and a piercing soundtrack.

The hype for season five, which begins on November 9, had already convinced 17-year-old Mia Anderson that she should begin watching. But when Queen Elizabeth died, she tuned in to the show that weekend – along with millions of others, giving the show a 800 per cent global spike in viewership – looking to learn more about the late monarch. Anderson finished the existing four seasons “embarrassingly quickly,” she admits, and is now “extremely excited to see this new season and cast.”

Since the trailer was released a fortnight ago, however, a storm has been brewing. In a letter to The Times, Dame Judi Dench wrote of her dismay at a show that “seems willing to blur the lines between historical accuracy and crude sensationalism,” fearing that “a significant number of viewers, particularly overseas, may take its version of history as being wholly true.” She producers to add a content note to the programme warning that the events it depicts are not real – an idea reinforced by Sir John Major days later, who described the show as “a barrel-load of nonsense.” Having dodged calls for disclaimers since it began in 2016, The Crown finally caved; a reminder that these are fictionalised versions of history will accompany the new series once it begins next week.

Connecticut-based Anderson is, as Dame Judi singled out, an overseas viewer – and one who wasn’t there first time around to critically assess the show’s artistic licence . “I've always known at the back of my mind that there has been shady stuff happening in the Royal Family over the years,” Anderson says. “This show gave me the opportunity to really learn more about the disconnect within the members of the Royal family.”

For 24-year-old Lucia Forester, from Barcelona, “what I love about it is that it is, in principle, a historical series… I have the feeling that I am learning all the time.” She says she is aware that it is riven with “inaccuracies,” and admits that she does “not know exactly which bits are based on true events.” But while she occasionally looks up plot points online to check their veracity, truth is far from a dealbreaker when it comes to watching the show, which for her simultaneously serves as great viewing, and a means of learning English.

“I really love the way it’s like a reality show but for these people who have been portrayed as ‘above us’ forever,” says 22-year-old Sophie Lapidge, who lives in Essex. “It makes them human, with their own issues and whatnot. Frankly I think it makes them more likeable.” Australian Olivia Jenkins, 24, agrees, calling it “one of the few shows to offer, whether accurate or inaccurate, a portrayal of members of the family as imperfect humans, which challenges their oft upheld image of divinity on earth or untouchable.”

This is a commonly held view among other Gen Z-ers, she adds. “In my experience, the show has been somewhat effective in engaging younger viewers with the royals. Even if they do not have a view on the monarchy itself and its role in the Western world, they developed more of an appreciation for the royals as people or humans, rather than just public figures.”

A stellar cast has helped to bring many of those figures to life, The Crown’s young fans enthuse, with many singling out both Vanessa Kirby’s portrayal of the Princess Margaret (which “tugged at my emotions”, per Anderson) as well as Helena Bonham Carter’s iteration (“one of my favourite actresses,” Forester says). The show has also turned Diana, myth and mononym, into a more tangible entity for those born prior to her death in 1997, with Emma Corrin’s turn as the Princess last season described by this newspaper as “heartbreaking”.

Heartbreaking: Emma Corrin as Diana last season - Netflix
Heartbreaking: Emma Corrin as Diana last season - Netflix

The last season ended with she and Charles (Josh O’Connor, another Gen Z fave) having a particularly unmerry Christmas at Balmoral – and the tumult set to envelope this season will make the world’s most famous family “relatable” to young viewers like never before.

This is, in part, due to the fact that far more scandals hit the Royal Family during 1991-97, when season five is set. From Princess Diana’s incendiary biography to the Bashir interview, then-Prince Charles’s own tell-all sitdown with Jonathan Dimbleby, “tampongate” (when Charles told Camilla he wanted to “live inside her” like Tampax, Fergie’s toe-kissing sojourn in the south of France, Princess Anne’s divorce and a fire at Windsor Castle, the scriptwriters presumably had a fairly easy day at the office.

Morgan, whose show has secured more than 400 award nominations and 129 wins, told Variety that “we must all accept that the 1990s was a difficult time for the Royal Family, and King Charles will almost certainly have some painful memories of that period.” But he added that it needn't follow “that, with the benefit of hindsight, history will be unkind to him, or the monarchy. The show certainly isn’t. I have enormous sympathy for a man in his position – indeed, a family in their position. People are more understanding and compassionate than we expect sometimes.”

This compassion is keenly felt by young viewers, for whom the show has changed their opinions of the monarchy. Forester, for instance, says that while she is “super anti-monarchical” and “critical of colonialism and racism, which is a big issue in the UK’s history,” watching The Crown “really makes you forget all this.”

'Tampongate': Olivia Williams plays Camilla Barker Bowles, opposite Dominic West as Prince Charles - Netflix
'Tampongate': Olivia Williams plays Camilla Barker Bowles, opposite Dominic West as Prince Charles - Netflix

For some, it has gone further – each season raking over so much royal turmoil as to make Gen Z viewers fearful for those who have as yet evaded its storylines. “I'm especially worried about Prince Harry's family and their wellbeing,” Anderson says. “Meghan has been under scrutiny the moment she was first pictured with Harry and it doesn't seem [like it will stop] anytime soon. …As for Lilibet and Archie they were blessed with two amazing parents but I do genuinely worry for how they'll be treated when they're older.”

Morgan has decided the sixth season will in fact be the last. (A subject presumably dependent on the point at which the Sussex-related drama becomes too delicious to ignore, and a seventh gets underway...)

But Lapidge, who was born in 1999, says that Gen Z watchers are in no need of a hard stop. “It would be nice to watch the parts that I was alive to witness,” and that the show need call it a day “when it’s no longer good.” With enough recent scandal to make the Diana years look tame, an award-winning team behind it and a rapt audience, that day may be some way off.


The Crown begins on Netflix on November 9