YOU’VE BEEN DENCHED

Judi Dench Slams ‘The Crown,’ Calling It ‘Cruelly Unjust’ to Royals

The Dench intervention appears to be in reaction to the news that the Netflix series will depict a fictionalized scene showing Charles musing about his mother’s abdication.

Dame Judi Dench is running a full-court press against Netflix’s The Crown ahead of its highly anticipated fifth season, calling the show “crude” and “cruelly unjust” to the royal family it depicts, warts and all. In a scorching letter to The Times of London published Wednesday, Dench asserted that the Emmy-winning series risks straying toward “an inaccurate and hurtful account of history” as its timeline inches closer to the present day. The forthcoming season will depict the fracturing of then-Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s marriage, including a fictionalized scene where Charles floats a plan to get his mother to abdicate the throne. Calling this a “wounding” insult, Dench growls in her letter that “this is both cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent.” She should know—not only is Dench a close chum to Queen Consort Camilla, she was made a Companion of Honour to the late Queen Elizabeth II in 2005. “No one is a greater believer in artistic freedom than I, but this cannot go unchallenged,” the British national treasure wrote.