Princess Diana's Brother Says 'The Crown' Features "a Lot of Conjecture and a Lot of Invention"
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The Crown's fourth season, now on Netflix, introduces viewers to a young Diana Spencer. Naturally, a lot of people have opinions about the show's portrayal of the late Princess of Wales—including her brother Charles Spencer, who has recently shared his thoughts.
On the ITV show Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh, the host asked Charles, Earl of Spencer, whether he felt uneasy watching The Crown.
The Earl replied, "There is a bit. Actually, The Crown asked if they could film at Althorp and I said obviously not." (Althorp is the Spencer family's estate, and where Princess Diana and Charles grew up; it's now run by the Earl, and open to visitors a few months per year.)
Spencer continued, explaining his decision. "The worry for me is that people see a program like that and they forget that it is fiction," he stated. "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."
The interviewer then asked Spencer his opinion on the show's truthfulness. The Earl noted that there is a mixture of truth and fiction, which makes it difficult for the audience to distinguish between the two.
"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," he said, attributing his unease to a desire to protect his sister's legacy.
Recently, a similar impulse drove the Earl to launch a public complaint against the BBC regarding the landmark 1995 interview between Princess Diana and BBC's Panorama host, Martin Bashir. Charles claims that he introduced his sister to Bashir after the journalist misled him: Bashir showed the Earl bank statements, which were allegedly falsified to indicate that two of Diana's allies were being paid to leak information to the press. This complaint is ongoing, but the BBC is launching an independent investigation into the matter—a move that Prince William deemed "a step in the right direction." (Prince Harry hasn't commented publicly on the matter, but a source close to the royal assured that he is receiving "regular updates," and added that a public statement isn't needed "to imagine how he is feeling privately.")
"I feel it is my duty to stand up for her when I can," Spencer said." I feel very passionately that I have a role to honor her memory."
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