Charles and Camilla to ‘take quite a hit’ as future seasons of The Crown stir up ‘trouble’
Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, will take an even bigger hit over future seasons of The Crown, a royal commentator has warned. Richard Fitzwilliams spoke to Express.co.uk about the “shocking” portrayal of the couple in the Netflix series, and the impact this could have on their public favorability. He claimed the “obsession” with the past and Diana, Princess of Wales, was creating “a drip feed of negativity” for the future king and queen consort.
Mr Fitzwilliams told Express.co.uk: “There’s a Season 5 and Season 6 of The Crown, which means 20 more episodes. I think that they’re going to take quite a hit over it.
“The portrayal of Charles as a gormless imbecile who regards the rest of the royals as a politburo and is utterly selfish, self-indulgent and thoroughly nasty is simply horrible. There’s no question about that.
“The trouble is a huge audience sees it, and don’t necessarily know that much of it is fiction. They won’t put a disclaimer, which they should.
“But the facts are that it would, in any case, be very very damaging. You’ve got this perpetual obsession with a disastrous past marriage.”
He continued: “There’s no doubt people do regard Diana as a victim, I mainly do.
“But that facts are that I think The Crown is terribly damaging to Charles and Camilla.
“It’s a drip feed of negativity and this will go on.
“We’ve just had 10 in which they were portrayed shockingly. There are 20 more to come.”
Mr Fitzwilliams told Express.co.uk: “There’s the reinvestigation of the Diana Panorama interview, and the fact that programme is making a documentary about itself. So that continues.
“There’s a new film with Kristen Stewart as Diana. There is the unveiling of Diana’s statue.
“From that point of view, I think it’s very difficult with the past being so talked about constantly.”
Charles and Camilla’s Clarence House social media accounts were even forced to turn off comments during the same period – as they faced a backlash online.
The Prince of Wales’ friends were quoted as saying the series “dragged up things that happened during very difficult times 25 or 30 years ago without a thought for anyone’s feelings”.
Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden even waded into the debate, demanding a disclaimer that specified the show was a work of fiction.
However, Netflix rebuffed the requests, stating: “We have always presented ‘The Crown’ as a drama – and we have every confidence our members understand it’s a work of fiction that’s broadly based on historical events,” it said.
“As a result we have no plans – and see no need – to add a disclaimer.”
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