Judi Dench slams 'The Crown' as 'cruelly unjust' and insists Netflix add a disclaimer

• Judi Dench wrote a letter to The Times UK criticizing the Netflix drama "The Crown."
• The famed actress said the streamer needs a disclaimer to help fans distinguish fact from fiction.

Judi Dench wrote an open letter to The Times UK denouncing the portrayal of the British royal family in the Netflix drama "The Crown."

The show has come under fire for its fictional recreation of historical events since it premiered in 2016, and as the plot inches toward the present, the show has taken even more heat. "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," Dench wrote.

"No one is a greater believer in artistic freedom than I, but this cannot go unchallenged," she added.

Dench called out specific storylines from "The Crown" she considered to be damaging to the monarchy.

"Given some of the wounding suggestions apparently contained in the new series — that King Charles plotted for his mother to abdicate, for example, or once suggested his mother's parenting was so deficient that she might have deserved a jail sentence — this is both cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent," she continued.

Dench recommended that Netflix add a disclaimer to the show to ensure that viewers understand they are consuming a work of fiction.

Peter Morgan, who created "The Crown," has previously maintained that the series is not intended to be completely historically accurate. Dench stated that more should be done to distinguish the show as a drama and not a documentary.

"The program makers have resisted all calls for them to carry a disclaimer at the start of each episode," she continued.

Dench has portrayed real-life figures in her own career. In 2011, she portrayed J. Edgar Hoover's mother, Annie Hoover, in "J. Edgar," and the English actress Dame Agnes Sybil Thorndike in "My Week with Marilyn." She has also played members of the royal family, including Queen Victoria in both 1997's "Mrs. Brown" and the 2017 film "Victoria & Abdul."

Other fictional series have been made about the British and French royal families that do not include disclaimers, including "The Tudors," "The White Queen," "The Spanish Queen," "The Serpent Queen" and "Reign."

Dench suggested "The Crown" could be considered disrespectful in the wake of the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

"The time has come for Netflix to reconsider — for the sake of a family and a nation so recently bereaved, as a mark of respect to a sovereign who served her people so dutifully for 70 years, and to preserve their own reputation in the eyes of their British subscribers."

"The Crown" season five premieres on Netflix on November 9.