CAMILLA PARKER TROLLED
NETFLIX URGED TO ISSUE DISCLAIMER OVER ‘CRUEL PORTRAYAL’ OF ROYALS’ ROMANCE
IT’S time for fans of The Crown to Netflix and chill out – after trolls targeted the Duchess of Cornwall over its depiction of her fling with Prince Charles.
The hit drama’s controversial fourth series portrays Prince Charles’s affair with Camilla Parker Bowles while he was married to Princess Diana, who died in 1997. Critics have labelled the heir’s second wife ‘vile’ and ‘despicable’ – even though show chiefs admit it is not all historically accurate.
Buckingham Palace accused Netflix of ‘trolling’ the couple – who wed in 2005 – this month, and The Mail On Sunday has launched a campaign calling for warnings to be aired ahead of each episode.
It said the show wrongly suggested their affair continued throughout Charles’s marriage to Diana, when in fact he cheated on her for part of it. Former culture secretary Karen Bradley said it was ‘ vital’ episodes carried a ‘warning that it is not strictly faithful to the facts’. Downton Abbey creator Lord Julian Fellowes added: ‘I can’t help feeling that the very brilliant programme makers sometimes forget these are real people leading real lives.’ However, historian Alex von Tunzelmann tweeted: ‘I take issue with the assertion “fiction is presented as fact”. It isn’t. It’s billed as a drama. The people in it are actors performing a script.’ The Crown’s creator Peter Morgan has also defended taking liberties with storylines, saying: ‘You sometimes have to forsake accuracy, but you must never forsake truth.’