Royal Sources Are Worried About 'The Crown' Season 5

Britain's Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and President of Women of the World Festival (L), meets actor Emerald Fennell, who portrayed the Duchess in the television series 'The Crown', during a reception to mark International Women's Day at Clarence House, in London, on March 8, 2022

(Image credit: Photo by Arthur Edwards / Getty)

published 27 September 2022

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the Royal Family utterly despises The Crown (perhaps with the exception of Camilla, who at least seems to have a sense of humor about it).

It makes sense: Wherever you stand on various royals, the hit Netflix series clearly has a massive influence on viewers' opinions of the real-life family, with the previous season turning tons—and I mean, tons—of people against now-King Charles and Queen Consort Camilla.

So, as Netflix announces that it will not delay the release of season five, which hits our screens in November, it's hardly surprising that Palace insiders are ever so slightly freaking out about what it will do for the new monarch's reputation, as well as how it will handle the portrayal of the late Queen Elizabeth.

In the run-up to the new season coming out, a royal insider told the Telegraph that the show is "a drama not a documentary, with the implication being that you shouldn't believe everything you see on the show (while it fictionalizes many aspects of the Royal Family and certainly gets things wrong a lot, it is still overall based in fact).

Season five will center around the divorce of then-Prince Charles and Princess Diana, which followed on from the affair Charles carried on with Camilla over the course of his first marriage, and if the previous seasons are any indication, it will be taking no prisoners.

A friend of the King called the show "exploitative" and claimed the streaming platform has "no qualms about mangling people’s reputations." The source added, "What people forget is that there are real human beings and real lives at the heart of this."

Another insider told the Telegraph that royal fans would have more opportunities to make up their opinions of the real-life Charles and Camilla now that they are King and Queen. "You will see the King and the Queen Consort on state business in the U.K. and abroad and people will have more of an opportunity to compare the real people with the fiction they see in The Crown," they said.

"In the past they didn’t get so much coverage, so in that sense it was harder for people to be able to compare and contrast the drama with the reality."

But the monarch and his wife aren't the only royals who have reason to be concerned over the Netflix show: Prince William and Prince Harry both also reportedly have their own anxieties about it.

Iris Goldsztajn is a London-based journalist, editor and author. She is the morning editor at Marie Claire, and her work has appeared in the likes of InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Bustle and Shape. Iris writes about everything from celebrity news and relationship advice to the pitfalls of diet culture and the joys of exercise. She has many opinions on Harry Styles, and can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.