The Crown’s fifth season has been out for a minute, but apparently royal insiders simply aren’t done complaining about it. And the newest person to take issue with the show is Princess Margaret’s lady-in-waiting Lady Anne Glenconner (who is played by Nancy Carroll in the show’s third and fourth season).
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour (via The Daily Mail), Lady Anne said “The trouble is that people, especially in America, believe it completely. It’s so irritating. I don’t watch The Crown now because it just makes me so angry. And it’s so unfair on members of the royal family.”
Lady Anne went on to say that Princess Margaret’s storyline was particularly “hurtful,” and that she found Helena Bonham Carter’s portrayal of the late princess “disappointing.”
“I know from my own experience, being in The Crown, it wasn’t true at all,” she said of a scene in the show where she tries to set up Margaret. “Of course that didn’t happen. I don’t know why they had to do that. The real thing about the royal family is so interesting. They don’t have to embroider it.”
Lady Anne also claims she talked to Helena Bonham Carter about the show, saying “Afterwards, I said to her, ‘a bit disappointing, wasn’t it?’ And she replied ‘yes, but I’m an actress, I have to do what’s written.'”
Meanwhile, Netflix previously noted that “The Crown has always been presented as a drama based on historical events. Series five is a fictional dramatization, imagining what could have happened behind closed doors during a significant decade for the Royal Family – one that has already been scrutinized and well documented by journalists, biographers and historians.”