The British government is exerting increasing pressure on the giant Netflix to clarify without a shadow of a doubt that the popular series “The Crown” is much fruit of the imagination of his screenwriters. A second request arrives a few weeks after the first, and Netflix does not he never replied. On this occasion, it was the culture secretary, John Whittingdale, who said that “it would be recommended” that Netflix warned viewers that the series, even if based on real facts, is still one dramatization based on “speculation” around historical facts.
“Much of the series is about, for example, the conversations between Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and her sister, Princess Margaret. I don’t think Netflix was in the room at the time. This is inevitably a guess,” Whittingdale said before a commission of the House of Commons. What would be staged therefore is the fruit of the imagination of Piter Morgan (the brilliant screenwriter of the series) on what could have happened.
The dispute has been going on for weeks. Last month the culture minister, Oliver Dowden, had heard the need to write a letter to the US production company asking for an explicit alert to indicate that “The Crown” is a work of fiction. Still, the production had rejected the sender the request. “We have always featured The Crown like fiction, and we trust fully in the fact that our listeners understand that it is a work of fiction, based in a big way on historical events. So we don’t have plans, and we don’t see the need to include this warning“, Netflix had cut short.
