Netflix The Crown: Miriam Margolyes says that the lives of Royal Family shouldn’t be a soap opera

Miriam Margolyes said Netflix hit drama The Crown shouldn’t be made as it depicts members of the Royal Family who are still alive.
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Miriam Margolyes said factual dramas such as The Crown shouldn’t be made as it depicts the lives of the Royal Family who are still living. In a recent interview with My Weekly magazine, the Harry Potter actor said people who are still alive should not have their lives turned into a “soap opera”.

Particularly critical of Netflix’s hit The Crown, the 81-year-old British-Australian actress said she feels “very protective” about the Royal Family. She added: “I don’t watch The Crown and I feel very protective about the Royal Family. They shouldn’t have their life made into a soap opera as they’re still living it.

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She added: "I don’t like seeing people’s lives on TV who are still alive. I think that’s quite wrong." Although she wasn’t a fan of the popular series, Margolyes however praised BBC’s historical drama, Call The Midwife - a series about a group of nurse midwives working in the East End of London in the late 1950s and 1960s.

She said: "The characters and the actors who play them are superb, the scripts outstanding. The success of the show is in the scripts and the producers take endless trouble with them. The scripts are truthful, and about real people and real things that happened."

As the most recent season of The Crown draws closer to the present, it has been criticised for its lack of factual authenticity. The fifth season takes place between 1991 and 1997 and features the divorce of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, Prince Philip’s contentious relationship with Penelope Knatchbull, and Tony Blair’s landslide election victory.

Netflix finally added a disclaimer to its marketing for its hit series, after years of controversy over the blurred line between fiction and reality. The move came after pressure from the likes of Dame Judi Dench, who called the series “cruelly unjust” to the monarchy.

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Former prime minister Sir John Major also criticised Netflix, saying that a scene which portrays a plot to oust Elizabeth II was “a barrel-load of malicious nonsense.” A spokesperson said: “Sir John has not cooperated in any way with The Crown. Nor has he ever been approached by them to factcheck any script material in this or any other series.

“As you will know, discussions between the monarch and prime minister are entirely private and – for Sir John – will always remain so. But not one of the scenes you depict are accurate in any way whatsoever. They are fiction, pure and simple.”

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