Jared Harris. Ming Yeung/Getty Images
Jared Harris thinks the royals have nothing to be upset about when it comes to The Crown — and believes they might even consider it good press.
“There’s always a question of whether you should be doing this or telling this tale or whether it is in some way disrespectful and my opinion is that I think the royal family would be delighted because it is humanizing them,” the 62-year-old actor — who played Queen Elizabeth II’s father, King George VI, in the first two seasons of the Netflix drama — said during a Monday, November 27, appearance on BBC’s Today via Deadline.
Several royals have admitted to enjoying watching The Crown over the years.
Princess Eugenie confessed to watching “a couple of episodes” in 2017. “It is filmed beautifully,” Eugenie, now 33, told Hello! at the time. “The music is wonderful, the story is beautiful. You feel very proud to watch it. I can’t speak for everyone, but that’s how I felt when I watched it.”
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Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have also stated that they watch the Emmy-winning TV show — but the Duke of Sussex stressed that it is fictionalized.
“They don’t pretend to be news. It’s fiction. … But it’s loosely based on the truth,” Harry, now 39, said while on The Late Late Show With James Corden in February 2021. “It gives you a rough idea about what that lifestyle, what the pressures of putting duty and service above family and everything else, what can come from that. I’m way more comfortable with The Crown than I am seeing the stories written about my family, or my wife, or myself.”
Not everyone feels that way. Last year, Lady Anne Glenconner, a longtime friend of Queen Elizabeth II, slammed the series.
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“The trouble is that people, especially in America, believe it completely. It’s so irritating,” Lady Glenconner, 91, said during a November 2022 appearance on BBC Radio 4’s “Women’s Hour.” “I don’t watch The Crown now because it just makes me so angry. And it’s so unfair on members of the royal family.”
She went on to call the Netflix series, which premiered in 2016, a “complete fantasy” rather than an accurate biographical drama.
Emma Corrin, who played Princess Diana in seasons 3 and 4, said she’d rather not think about the royals watching. “It’s really interesting,” Corrin, 27, told TheWrap in June 2021. “Personally, I try not to engage with it because I feel like it’s a slippery slope and if I start worrying about who’s seen it and what they think, it becomes stressful.”
The final episodes of The Crown are set to hit Netflix on December 14.
