Netflix delays secret Harry and Meghan documentary over royal The Crown backlash
The famous family at the center of The Crown is still very mad about The Crown
The British royals have never been particularly “chuffed” about Netflix’s The Crown, which makes sense because nobody would ever want to be the subject of a popular and successful TV show that makes you seem more interesting than you actually are, but the crown’s complaints have steadily ramped up lately as the show has gotten closer to the present day—and closer to the death of Princess Diana, who will be played by Elizabeth Debicki in the show’s fifth and sixth seasons (opposite Dominic West’s then-Prince Charles and Imelda Staunton’s Queen Elizabeth II.
Now, according to Deadline and at least one unnamed insider source, Netflix is so “rattled” by the British royals after the death of the Queen that it has quietly delayed an unannounced documentary about Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess Of Sussex, that was supposed to come out after the launch of the new season of The Crown. Though Netflix’s official stance is that it never officially announced any such documentary, Deadline says it has now been bumped into next year.
The key issue here is not specifically the future episode about Diana’s death in season six, but a subplot in the upcoming season five (premiering on November 9) in which West’s Charles meets with former U.K. Prime Minister John Major to talk about a poll that ran in a newspaper in 1991 about whether or not British people thought Queen Elizabeth II should abdicate the throne for Charles. In The Crown, apparently, Charles and Major have a very House Of The Dragon-esque conversation about how it sure would be nice if Charles were to take over and reenergize the public’s support for the monarchy by giving Elizabeth the proverbial royal boot, which the real Major insists didn’t happen. (Spoiler alert: She lived for another 30 YEARS after that point, because Queen Elizabeth II was truly the Simpsons of monarchs.)
Deadline’s source said, “they’re rattled at Netflix and they blinked first and decided to postpone the documentary.” That’s interesting, considering Netflix didn’t blink in the face of the (possibly overblown?) backlash against Dahmer and, while there is a surprising number of people who care a lot about the royals, nobody cares about them as much as they care about themselves. Buckingham Palace probably just has the one Netflix login anyway, so keeping them happy can’t be that important.