EXPLOITATION?

‘The Crown’ Recreates the Princess Diana Interview—and Makes Trouble for Prince Harry

How Prince Harry can continue to work for Netflix while condemning those who exploit his family is a circle that cannot be easily squared.

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Prince Harry was facing renewed scrutiny over his and his wife Meghan’s commercial relationship with Netflix after it emerged that the screening giant’s tentpole show The Crown devoted two episodes in the new season to Princess Diana’s Panorama interview with Martin Bashir, which Harry denounced after it emerged Bashir secured it by using deceitful tactics.

Advance copies of the fifth season of the hit show have been distributed to media organizations, and U.K. tabloid the Sun reported Tuesday that Diana’s interview with Bashir is the basis of two episodes and that the show includes a recreation of the interview lasting over four minutes.

The interview was the subject of a BBC inquiry that established interviewer Martin Bashir used fake bank statements, and other underhand tactics, to persuade Diana she was being spied on as part of his efforts to get her to cooperate.

After that inquiry published its results, Harry condemned the interview as part of “a culture of exploitation.”

However, he has consistently refused to condemn The Crown despite what some might call its clear exploitation of his mother and wider family’s story.

In one interview, he told James Corden the show was clearly “fiction” and that he was much more concerned about newspapers peddling lies that they claimed were true.

(Netflix has thus far declined to append a disclaimer to The Crown saying it is fiction.)

The Daily Mail critic Christopher Stevens, having seen the new material, said that Charles is “depicted as devious, impatient, resentful, devoid of self-awareness in his desperation to be king.”

Former British Prime Minister John Major said last month that scenes showing Charles trying to persuade him to encourage the queen to abdicate were “a barrel load of nonsense peddled for no other reason than to provide maximum—and entirely false—dramatic impact.”

Netflix said, “Season five of The Crown will dramatize events surrounding the Panorama interview, given the pivotal part it played during the time period the series covers.

“It will reflect what we now know about how the interview was obtained and how Diana was treated. The interview is not recreated in full.”

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Tom SykesEuropean Editor at Large

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