The team behind The Crown has spoken out about how the award-winning Netflix drama will cover the death of Princess Diana.
Ahead of the sixth and final season later this year, there’s been plenty of conversation both in the media and among fans about how Diana’s death will be handled in the show.
Last year, Netflix was forced to shut down reports in Deadline that the crew had been “on edge” while filming scenes of Diana’s fatal car accident in Paris, with a spokesperson insisting that the “exact moment of the crash impact will not be shown”.
The conversation then reignited in March when the Daily Mail reported that The Crown had recreated the aftermath of the crash, and published photos of a wrecked Mercedes that will supposedly be used in the show’s final season.
During a discussion at the Edinburgh TV Festival on Thursday, The Crown’s executive producer Suzanne Mackie insisted (via Metro): “The show might be big and noisy, but we’re not. We’re thoughtful people and we’re sensitive people.
“There were very careful, long conversations about how we were going to do it.”
She continued: “The audience will judge it in the end, but I think it’s been delicately, thoughtfully recreated.
“Elizabeth Debicki is an extraordinary actress and she was so thoughtful and considerate. She loved Diana. There’s a huge amount of respect from us all, I hope that’s evident.”
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly last year, Elizabeth Debicki admitted she was unaware of the “concerns”, adding: “I’ll say that Peter [Morgan, The Crown’s creator] and the entire crew of this job do their utmost to really handle everything with such sensitivity and truth and complexity, as do actors.
“The amount of research and care and conversations and dialogue that happen over, from a viewer’s perspective, something probably that you would never ever notice is just immense.
“From that very first meeting [with] Peter, I knew that I’d entered into this space where this was taken seriously [in] a deeply caring way. So that’s my experience of the show.”
Since its debut, The Crown has been met with criticism from some viewers due to its fictionalised depiction of 20th century history.
However, as the events portrayed in The Crown have come closer to the present day, these discussions have become louder, with many calling for a disclaimer to be added to the Netflix show highlighting that it is not always historically accurate.
Netflix eventually added one to the season five trailer, but not the show itself, saying at the time: “The Crown has always been presented as a drama based on historical events.
“Series five is a fictional dramatisation, imagining what could have happened behind closed doors during a significant decade for the Royal Family — one that has been scrutinised and well-documented by journalists, biographers and historians.”
The Crown is expected to return for its sixth season in November.