The royal family has seen your TV shows and movies about them, and let’s just say, mum ain’t pleased.
Speaking with The A.V. Club, Tina Brown, the former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and author of the upcoming book The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor—the Truth and the Turmoil, says that Buckingham Palace isn’t binging The Crown like it’s the new season of Stranger Things. And understandably so, why would they want to watch a show made for mere mortals who don’t even have one castle, let alone several. But as The Crown edges into a modern era where Kate Middleton exists, Brown says that the Royal family is “very unhappy about this season moving forward” and tries to block filming where possible.
“Whenever they can, they stop The Crown filming in locations where they have an influence,” Brown told The A.V. Club. “For instance, [Eton College] refused to let them film there, which was undoubtedly about recognizing William’s feelings that, you know, they weren’t going to have it. So they’ve shown their displeasure by making it quite clear that they are not happy, and we’ll give it no help.”
This is why being born into the role of a pseudo-governmental figurehead that wears publicly funded jewelry is way better than being democratically elected. You don’t have to worry about voters who love The Crown.
Things get even trickier regarding the two royal defectors, Megan and Harry. Brown warns that if “Harry and Meghan want to be consistent, they ought not to really be involved with Netflix.” But, of course, it’s a little late for that. Per The New York Times, in February Harry and Meghan signed “a multiyear deal with Netflix, which will pay them to make documentaries, docu-series, feature films, scripted shows, and children’s programming.” The price tag is somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 million, and who needs consistency when you have 100 million smackers?
“I don’t think that the next season of The Crown is going to be something that Harry is going to seriously approve of in the sense of the way it’s depicts his mother. We don’t know how it will depict his mother. But right now, there’s really nothing that’s come out about their mother that they like.”
Brown herself also isn’t a big fan of the Princess Diana biopics. She called Spencer “just terrible” and “foolish and silly.” In her estimation, “The rendition of the family was of a kind of waxworks people, and that’s just not true.” Brown argues that Prince Charles has a “great sense of humor” and is “smart.” That’s news to us, but we’ll take her word for it.