Sarah Ferguson Denies Offering to Consult on ‘The Crown’ Amid Disclaimer Drama: She Did Not Help ‘In Any Way’

usmagazine.com:

Staying out of it. Sarah Ferguson denied offering to consult on season 5 of The Crown, which will chronicle the royal family’s ups and downs in the early 1990s.“The Duchess was in contact with Andy Harries, who produces The Crown, last year and they had a discussion about the possibility of adapting her novel Her Heart for a Compass into a TV series,” a spokesperson for the Duchess of York, 63, told Us Weekly in a statement on Friday, October 28. “They did not discuss The Crown or any idea of her helping with the series in any way.”The spokesperson added that while “a suggestion” that Ferguson — who was married to Prince Andrew from 1986 to 1996 — assist on the show was brought up at one point by “a mutual friend,” nothing came of it. “The Duchess did not approach Left Bank offering to be a consultant,” the statement concluded.Rumors that the My Story author, who shares daughters Princess Beatrice, 34, and Princess Eugenie, 32, with her ex-husband, 62, had worked as a consultant on The Crown come one week after Dame Judi Dench slammed Netflix for their “inaccurate” portrayal of the royals. “The closer the drama comes to our present times, the more freely it seems willing to blur the lines between historical accuracy and crude sensationalism,” the Oscar winner, 87, wrote in an open letter to The Times on October 20. “No one is a greater believer in artistic freedom than I, but this cannot go unchallenged.”Dench continued: “Despite this week stating publicly that The Crown has always been a ‘fictionalized drama,’ the program makers have resisted all calls for them to carry a disclaimer at the start of each episode.