- Season five of "The Crown" premieres on November 9.
- An anonymous friend of Queen Elizabeth told The Times UK the show "would have destroyed" her.
A close friend of the late Queen Elizabeth is speaking out against the upcoming season of "The Crown," according to a new report from The Times UK.
The fifth season of the Netflix series about the royal family is set to premiere on November 9, and it will heavily focus on the downfall of King Charles III and Princess Diana's marriage.
Fans of the monarchy and those close to the royal family have routinely criticized the show. Judi Dench recently wrote an open letter to The Times UK insisting a disclaimer be added to the beginning to make clear to viewers that the Netflix series is fictional.
Netflix added a disclaimer to the trailer for season five that states the show is a "fictional dramatisation" that is "inspired by real-life events," and the show's creator, Peter Morgan, has repeatedly said his series was not created to be entirely historically accurate.
As the series premiere inches closer, more people who are close to the monarchy are speaking out against the show, including a close friend of Queen Elizabeth, who attended her majesty's committal service at Windsor Castle following her death in September, according to The Times.
"I'm horrified by what is going on with Netflix and how they are vilifying the royal family," the unnamed friend said to The Times. "It is vicious. It's as if they're trying to destroy the royal family."
"It would have destroyed her," the same friend said of how she thinks the Queen would have reacted to the series.
As shown in the trailer for season five, Elizabeth Debicki and Dominic West will star as Princess Diana and King Charles in the 1990s, alongside Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth. The season will include dramatizations of Princess Diana's tell-all interview with the BBC and the Queen's "annus horribilis" speech, as well as a scene in which then-Prince Charles petitions Prime Minister John Major to force his mother to abdicate.
A spokesperson for Major told The Times UK that "The Crown" is a "damaging and malicious fiction" and "a barrel-load of nonsense peddled for no other reason than to provide maximum, and entirely false, dramatic impact."
The Queen's unnamed friend did not tell The Times specifically what about the upcoming season would have upset the late monarch. However, she did say Prince Harry is in an "invidious position" because he and Meghan Markle signed a production deal with Netflix, which includes a now-delayed docuseries about him and his wife.
"If I had my family being vilified like that, I wouldn't take a penny" from Netflix, she told the outlet.
But the Duke of Sussex previously told James Corden that he is "way more comfortable with 'The Crown'" than he is seeing stories written about his family or his wife because it is "loosely based on the truth" unlike many tabloid stories.