Despite many devoted fans of The Crown telling me the current season is actually the worst season of the show, it’s by far the most popular, likely because it has resurfaced all of the royal scandals off the not-so-distant past. Naturally, the royal family and their associates have been less than thrilled to see Netflix undo “years and years of careful Palace work to rehabilitate the reputations of Charles, Camilla, and the institution itself,” as Jezebel’s Kelly Faircloth recently put it, and are now locked in a battle of wills with the streaming platform to make it clear that the show is fictional.
“We have always presented The Crown as a drama, and we have every confidence our members understand it’s a work of fiction that’s broadly based on historical events,” a Netflix spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter. “As a result we have no plans—and see no need—to add a disclaimer.”
The most recent calls for such a disclaimer came from UK culture secretary Oliver Dowden, who said in an interview with The Mail on Sunday that he feared “a generation of viewers who did not live through these events may mistake fiction for fact.”
But he’s hardly the only one to speak out against the show’s portrayal of the royal family. Last month, “palace sources” told the Daily Mail they thought it irresponsible for Netflix not to warn viewers that historical events had been dramatized, and that Prince William in particular was unhappy with the season.
‘The new series paints the Prince and Duchess in a very unflattering light but at least at the start of reality shows like The Only Way Is Essex they admit that some scenes have been invented for entertainment,” one insider said.
‘The Duke of Cambridge is none too pleased with it,” said another. “He feels that both his parents are being exploited and being presented in a false, simplistic way to make money.”
It seems like the royal family is going to have to simply put up with having their dirty laundry aired and re-aired, especially since the show’s creator, Peter Morgan, recently announced there would be a season six of The Crown, walking back a previous statement that season five would be the show’s last. I suppose they can at least breathe a sigh of relief that Morgan isn’t the least bit interested in touching Megxit.
“The Meghan and Harry story is nowhere near over yet,” Morgan told Town & Country. “And I’m happy that I’m never going to write it.”
Floyd Mayweather is...fighting...Logan Paul???
For anyone else who only knows Logan Paul as a YouTube personality indistinguishable from his brother Jake Paul, another YouTube personality, Paul wrestled in both high school and college, but has only fought one person as a pro (and lost).
Despite his 0-1 record, Paul has been trash-talking Mayweather, according to TMZ, which is what prompted the undefeated boxing champion to challenge him to a fight.
Learning more about this doesn’t make it any less bizarre, and I’m OK with that!
- Shawn Mendes and Camilla Cabello seem to be getting very serious because they’ve been talking about getting engaged and Mendes’s dad calls Cabello his “daughter-in-law.” This seems like another example of pandemic-induced relationship accelerationism to me since they’ve only been officially dating for about a year and a half, but what do I know! [People]
- Reported heartthrob Steve Kornacki is going to do the numbers thing for Sunday Night Football. [People]
- Vanderpump’s Charli Burnett is experiencing some schadenfreude following news that Jax Taylor is leaving the show. [Us Weekly]