King Charles’ Former Butler Believes ‘The Crown’ Is a Good Thing for the Royals Despite the ‘Difficult Subjects’
Netflix‘s historical drama The Crown has never been thought of as something the royal family supports. Part of that is because it depicts their lives over the course of several decades and doesn’t leave out any of their salacious scandals and affairs.
Now, someone who worked for King Charles III for a number of years thinks the show’s existence is “great” for the royals.
Why the king’s former butler thinks ‘The Crown’ is ‘great’ for the royals
Speaking on behalf of OnlineCasino.ca Grant Harrold, who worked as the current king’s butler from 2004 to 2011, shared with Showbiz Cheat Sheet that he believes the royals can view the show as a good thing.
“Obviously, there’s a lot of debate over it but this is great, I think, for the royal family, and for The Crown,” Harrold opined, adding, “Do they not say all PR is good PR?”
The former royal butler did acknowledge though how difficult the subject matter must be for the family since the series has ventured into the Princess Diana years.
He continued: “What’s difficult about this program, The Crown is based on a family and it is based partly on reality. It’s supposed to be partly factual because they are talking about things that actually happened. Now, there’s a lot of things they don’t know because the family is still alive today and there’s a lot of stuff that is confidential. They have to make up the bits they think they know or with the information that’s out there, which is a fair enough thing to do. I think what’s difficult is because with the subject being [Princess Diana] who is the mother of William and Harry and the ex-wife of the king, it’s a very difficult subject.
“They know what happened, they are aware of their emotions and aware of their upset, the stress … Whether it be right or wrong, it’s bringing it back up and reliving it.”
The accuracy of other show’s dramatizing the royals’ lives
Harrold also gave his take on the accuracy of other shows about Britian’s most famous family.
He explained: “There [are] a lot of programs out there about the royal family now, about the royal family in the past, a lot of those programs, we don’t know. How did we know what happened in Victoria’s time? We don’t. The diaries were altered by her children so the programs that get made are based on her diaries but her diaries were altered. Some of it’s fact, we know when people were born and when they got married, set events, set things, but there are things we don’t know about. What’s difficult is these programs do have bits that get added on to them, they don’t know. And that is part of a drama.
“The thing about the royal family is they don’t come out and say ‘that’s true,’ ‘that’s false,’ they just don’t do it.”
Some tried to stop Netflix from releasing the new season without a disclaimer
There has been some controversy surrounding the fifth season of The Crown over the turbulent time period it covers and Netflix’s decision not to put a fiction disclaimer at the beginning of every episode.
“Whether you need to put a disclaimer up or not, I don’t know. I really don’t know and I understand the panic because how do you get around that?” Harrold said. “If you start putting disclaimers up there, are you going to start putting disclaimers up on Victoria? On programs about King George V, George III, George II, George I?”
In an open letter to The Times in October, Dame Judi Dench joined the calls of those who have been demanding a disclaimer be added ahead of each episode of the show. Dench also hit out at the streaming giant for “being willing to blur the lines between historical accuracy and crude sensationalism.”
