‘The Crown’s Jonathan Pryce “Bitterly Disappointed” By “Fellow Artistes” Who Attacked Netflix Drama; Imelda Staunton & Lesley Manville Suggest Reason For “Heightened” Tension Towards Series
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: The Crown’s Jonathan Pryce, who portrays Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in the show’s upcoming fifth season, has told Deadline he’s ”bitterly disappointed” by those he termed “my fellow artistes,” for publicly criticizing the drama and demanding it carry a disclaimer.
Pryce was referring to comments made by Judi Dench in The Times where she called the series “cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent.” The grand Dame, no stranger to portraying royals, having won an Oscar for her portrait of Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love, and a BAFTA for starring as Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown, asked that a disclaimer be played at the start of each episode stating that The Crown is a “fictionalised drama.” Netflix subsequently added a disclaimer to the series description for the latest trailer but stopped short of adding the message to the trailer itself.
Oscar-nominee Pryce argued that “the vast majority of people know it’s a drama. They’ve been watching it for four seasons.” In a view shared by cast colleagues Imelda Staunton and Lesley Manville, who respectively play Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret in season 5, Pryce noted that the public outbursts attacking The Crown “came about because of an enhanced sensitivity because of the passing of the Queen.” Manville agreed and said that the ongoing hostility towards the Netflix and Left Bank series was ”certainly heightened” by the death of Queen Elizabeth II on September 8.
Manville told Deadline, “There is, and for my part as well, a great deal of compassion towards the Queen, and depths of feeling that she is no longer with us.
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