Princess Diana’s Family Shared Their Concerns About The Crown’s Portrayal Of Her

The actress Emma Corrin earned the role of young Diana in The Crown’s fourth season. And from the outfits to the hairstyle, Corrin has a striking likeness to Diana throughout her run. Olivia Colman shared that opinion too, as she appeared in a behind-the-scenes video for the program. But Colman, whose two-season stint as Queen Elizabeth II concluded with season 4, didn’t just focus on Corrin’s uncanny look, either.

Colman said, “[Corrin] really became [Diana], it was spooky to sit in front of her. It was like looking at the real thing. It was such a beautiful performance.” Due to the unique structure of The Crown, though, fans won’t be able to see more of Corrin’s portrayal beyond this season. Just like the other major characters in the show, Diana has been aged up for November 2022's season five.

Corrin’s performance covered the princess’ younger years when she first got together with Charles and experienced the pitfalls of worldwide fame. The actress’ successor in the role, Elizabeth Debicki, will depict her later years in the remaining two seasons. Quite a hard act to follow. But Debicki’s Diana in season 5 already has people talking.

Corrin told GQ magazine, “I’m sad about [leaving the show so soon]. But I’ve moved on.” She went on to offer more insight into her thoughts regarding her role during the behind-the-scenes video. And the young actress certainly sympathized with Diana’s position.

“The thing that dawned on me was how young Diana was when it all happened,” Corrin said. “She got married at 19, not only getting married but getting married into the royal family. And then I think she had William a year later.” At the same time, the rising star also wanted to make something clear to fans of the show.

“We’re not mimicking,” Corrin continued. “That’s not what we’re doing, this is our own and [creator and writer] Peter [Morgan]’s version of what happens. It’s his story, it’s fictitious.” But while her performance as Diana earned some excellent reviews in the press, the princess’s overall role in the program has generated plenty of controversies.

For instance, there’s one member of the late princess’s family who isn’t too happy about her portrayal in The Crown. Yes, we’re referring to Diana’s sibling, Earl Charles Spencer. Needless to say, watching his sister go through a miserable time on screen wasn't easy. He came out with some strong, heartfelt words on the matter after the episodes were released on Netflix.

Spencer plies his trade as an author and historian, with his latest book The White Ship published in September 2020. He’s also responsible for watching over his clan’s estate in Northamptonshire, England, which is better known as Althorp House. Remarkably, 19 generations of Spencer have lived there since its construction in 1508.

Towards the end of 2020, though, Spencer began to become a little more prominent in the media — but it wasn’t due to The Crown. Well, not at first anyway. You see, the fall of that year marked a significant anniversary in his family’s life. And it’s fair to say that it opened up some very raw wounds.

Back in November 1995, Diana sat down for a televised interview on the BBC One program Panorama. Martin Bashir helmed the chat, as the princess opened up about her life with the royals. In the interview, she shockingly revealed how both she and Charles had cheated on each other.

It was an astonishing interview — and seen by millions of viewers at home hooked on the drama. Diana’s life became a whirlwind over the next two years. She finalized her separation from Charles some nine months later. The interview only made the media presence around Diana that much more intense, and some believe that the frenzied press was in part to blame for the car accident that killed Diana in 1997.

And Diana's brother came forward with another shocking accusation on the 25th anniversary of the interview. According to Spencer, Bashir falsified financial records that indicated that a couple of royal attendants were sharing intel on Diana with the security services. The earl admitted that those documents were the catalyst behind his decision to initiate talks between Diana and the journalist. At first, Spencer's allegations were ignored.

But according to the Daily Mail, Director-General of the BBC, Tim Davie, confirmed to Spencer in 2020 that the documents were in fact forged by Bashir. Apparently, the journalist called upon the services of a graphic designer at the BBC to create them. Now fully informed, Diana’s brother wanted the corporation to look into anything else Bashir may have lied about.

"Ultimately, if I can get an apology out of the BBC for everything that they did around this, then I will feel semi-vindicated,” Spencer said. With all this going on, Spencer had a lot on his plate when The Crown’s fourth season premiered. All Spencer wanted was for Diana's honorable legacy to be secured, but the fourth season of the Netflix show unintentionally threatened to bring Diana's life and struggles back into the limelight.

To make matters worse, while Spencer fought to get justice for his sister's memory, the makers of The Crown asked him for a favor. Spencer explained more while he was a guest on the program Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh. The Earl recalled, “The Crown asked if they could film at Althorp and I said obviously not.” But Spencer’s thoughts on the popular Netflix show really came to light as the chat went on.

“The worry for me is that people see a program like that and they forget that it’s fiction,” Spencer continued. “They assume, especially foreigners, I find Americans tell me they have watched The Crown as if they’ve taken a history lesson. Well, they haven’t. There’s a lot of conjecture and a lot of invention, isn’t there?”

Spencer then added, “You can hang it on fact but the bits in between are not fact.” Considering his role as a historian, you can certainly understand his views on the matter. So keeping that in mind, you’re probably wondering what he thought of Diana’s part in the show. Was he concerned?

Well, as we suggested earlier, Spencer had an understandable emotional response when talking about his famous sister. Given the fictitious aspects of The Crown’s narrative, he developed a real urge to defend Diana. The Earl said, “I feel it is my duty to stand up for her when I can.”

Spencer noted, “[Diana] left me, for instance, as guardian of her sons. So I feel there was a trust passed on. And we grew up together, you know if you grow up with somebody they are still that person, it doesn’t matter what happens to them later. So yeah, I feel very passionately that I have a role to honor her memory.”

That’s a very commendable stance. Then again, we can’t help but ask — has Spencer watched Emma Corrin’s depiction of Diana? Does he have an opinion on how she played the royal? To answer that question, the princess’ brother came clean during his conversation with Lorraine Kelly on her TV show, Lorraine.

Spencer admitted, “I’m not a big Crown watcher, to be honest. I think I caught a couple of episodes in the past. I haven’t caught any of the current series, although my wife has watched it. And I did catch a news clip here of the actress portraying Diana, so I do know a little bit.”

From there, Spencer then reiterated his earlier thoughts — albeit with a suggestion for the show’s producers. Yes, he urged Netflix to make some clarifications to the audience before they started to watch the episodes. Would that help matters? The Earl certainly believed so — and wasn’t reticent when it came to making his case.

Spencer told Kelly, “I think my general point about The Crown is that I write history, [and] I brand what I write as non-fiction. If somebody reads something I’ve written, then they know that’s what they’re getting. I think it would help The Crown an enormous amount if, at the beginning of each episode, it stated that this isn’t true.”

“But [the message could also say] that it’s based around some real events,” Spencer continued. “Because then everyone could understand that this is drama for drama’s sake. I worry that people do think this is sort of gospel, and that’s unfair.” To illustrate his point, Diana’s brother flagged up an example from the program.

While Spencer hasn’t seen much of The Crown, he discovered that his grandmother was also featured in the fourth season. And he didn’t like the manner in which she’d been depicted, noting that she came across as “unpleasant.” In the historian’s opinion, this was a major misrepresentation of her real-life persona.

Clearly irritated by his grandmother’s portrayal, Spencer went on to make a pretty forceful point. He concluded, “My grandmother may be long-gone sadly, but she still has a daughter alive. She still has 10 grandchildren alive. Is it fair for people to be destroyed in that way? I don’t think so really.”

You might be curious if any other members of the royal family have an opinion on the show. After all, as the show’s timeline edges closer to recent events, it affects more people who are still around. Well, it’s believed that one high-profile figure from Buckingham Palace wasn’t too happy with the fourth season.

We’re referring to Prince William, who apparently didn’t appreciate the way that Diana and Charles’ relationship was depicted. One of his pals spoke to The Mail on Sunday, claiming, “[William doesn’t like that] his parents are being exploited and presented in a false, simplistic way to make money.” And as the show inches closer to Diana's death, people are undoubtedly wondering how tactful the show will be.

It was, after all, a hugely shocking moment for the world, and a devastating one for the royal family. One of Diana's friends, Simone Simmons, expressed frustration with the show's depiction of the princess in season 4, and her concern about how Diana's death will be handled on screen. But most of all, she worried about how the popular show will bring the traumatizing event back to the headlines.

For William and Harry, who lost their mother at 15 and 12, respectively, Diana's death isn't something to recreate on screen for entertainment purposes. And Simone Simmons made her stance on the matter very clear in an interview with The Sun. "These are cruel, sadistic, and wicked people to recreate these moments," she began.

"Netflix are deliberately reviving the most painful time in the boys' lives. It's forcing them to relive the pain, agony, and psychological torment they suffered when their mother died," Simmons said. For her, it seems, it doesn't matter how tactful Peter Morgan and those who produce The Crown are in their depiction of the royals. But the actress portraying Diana in season five revealed just how much thought went into Diana's character.

While Simmons claimed that "the makers of [The Crown] do not care about the heir to the throne and everything he has been through," actress Elizabeth Debicki told a much different story. "I don't really know about those concerns," she told Entertainment Weekly. "I'll say that [creator] Peter [Morgan] and the entire crew of this job do their utmost to really handle everything with such sensitivity and truth and complexity, as do actors."

Debicki continued, "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." The actress confirmed that every little detail was debated by the makers of the show, but that doesn't mean everyone involved is thrilled to be covering such an unhappy time for the royals.

After all, when you're depicting history as accurately as possible, you're forced to cover quite a few unpleasant moments — and the royal family has had many. But no moment was quite as culture-shifting as Diana's death, something even the show's cast and crew is allegedly wary of addressing. "We've been dreading getting to this point," one source from the show told Deadline.

Although Diana's death won't be covered in season five, it's expected to happen in the show's sixth and final season. "The countdown is 2 weeks and while we're calmly carrying on, it's fair to acknowledge that there's a certain anxiety; a palpable sense of being slightly on edge." The source summed up the anxiety with one sentence: "There's bombshell sensitivity surrounding this one."

This is especially true as the show reaches the 1990s, a famously disastrous decade for the royals. When it came to portraying the Queen's early years as a monarch, it was easier to get away with dramatizations of historic events, as many of the real-life people involved in the events had died. But the '90s were just 30 years ago; for many, the memories are still very fresh...

Netflix even commented on this fact in a statement to Deadline, released in response to the backlash surrounding the show's semi-fictionalized storytelling. "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." Still, Netflix's assurance that they've done their homework hasn't made people like Simone Simmons feel any better.

"They are rewriting history as they go along and that's what makes me very angry," Simmons said in her interview with The Sun. And to many other sources that are close to the royal family, the show's depiction of certain people and events isn't laughable so much as infuriating. The show, insiders claim, is insultingly off base.

One palace insider close to Charles hit out at the portrayal of the then-Prince of Wales’ character — along with Camilla Parker-Bowles. They told the paper, “This is trolling with a Hollywood budget.” That’s a pretty damning statement. So we get the feeling that the royals would welcome a disclaimer of sorts as The Crown continues.