With greater success comes greater responsibility and the minute The Crown season 4 hit Netflix, the big-money drama faced renewed scrutiny for its increasingly shaky relationship with the truth.
The fourth season follows two central plotlines: the tumultuous relationship between Prince Charles and Princess Diana, and the reign of the United Kingdomโs first female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and her time in office.
While The Crown famously employs an army of researchers and Royal biographers, the fourth season has come under fire for upping the drama at the expense of the facts.
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In an interview with The Times, the showโs creator, Peter Morgan, admitted that โsometimes you have to forsake accuracy, but you must never forsake the truth.โ
Weโve sifted through some of the key moments from The Crown season 4 to separate the fairytale from the factual.
Did The Queen dislike Margaret Thatcher?
Answer: Fact and Fiction
Britainโs two most powerful ladies are shown clashing on several issues, from the collapse of British manufacturing industries to the massive unemployment that followed.
Itโs commonly accepted that Margaret and Her Majesty were far from friends. A 1986 report in The Sunday Times claimed: โQueen dismayed by โuncaringโ Thatcher.โ
But their most significant fallout comes during episode eight, 4:81 when the pair butt heads over the Prime Ministerโs refusal to impose sanctions on apartheid South Africa. In the episode, The Queen is shown to be shocked by Thatcherโs position that she considers cancelling their weekly meeting.
While thereโs no proof that The Queen planned to abandon her weekly audience with the Prime Minister, her frustrations were real.
As shown in The Crown, The Queenโs press secretary, Michael Shea, leaks a memo to the press which shone a light on the Queenโs frustrations.
โThere is a wide view too that the Queen is in a rage with Mrs Thatcher over her handling of the sanctions question,โ read the memo.
Did Bob Hawke call the Queen a pig?
Answer: Fiction
The Australian episode of The Crown (officially titled โTerra Nullisโ but in reality shouldโve been called โCharles & Diana Do Down Underโ) begins with incoming Prime Minister Bob Hawke (played by Richard Roxburgh) appearing on the ABC program Four Corners.
Hawke is doing a whole riff on why Australia should be a republic, and he ends with this pearler: โNo unelected non-Australian, who lives on the other side of the world, and for all good intentions, is a different breed. You wouldnโt put a pig in charge of a herd of prime beef cut even if it did look good in a twin set and pearls.โ
Referring to The Queen as a pig is pretty red hot, itโs also a pretty big lie.
The closest Hawke came to saying thing remotely controversial during the real Four Corners interview was admitting โI donโt think weโll be talking about Kings in Australia forevermore. I believe weโd be better off as a republic.โ
Four Corners have also come out and denied the pig comment, posting the real clip as proof of the former PMโs words.
Did Charles really say โwhatever in love meansโ during an interview following his engagement to Diana?
Answer: Fact
Episode four, โFavouritesโ, centres around the historical engagement between Princes Charles and Diana on February 24, 1981. Shortly after their engagement, the pair sat down with the BBC for a now-infamous interview.
In the program, weโre shown a nervous Diana hiding behind Charles while fielding questions on their relationship. At one point, a reporter comments โYou both look very much in love,โ to which Diana replies โOh yes. Absolutely.โ Charles then awkwardly adds, โwhatever in love means.โ
It turns out this burn is brutally realistic (check the clip below), and in later years Diana would admit the words stung her deeply. In the documentary, Diana: In Her Own Words, the princess admits, โThat threw me completely, I thought โwhat a strange answerโ. It absolutely traumatised me.โ
Did Diana rearrange the Royal tour of Australia at the last minute so she could visit Prince William?
Answer: Fiction
One of the more dramatic moments of โTerra Nulliusโ comes during a mile-high confrontation between Charles and Diana. Charles appears frustrated that Diana decided to bring baby William on the six-week trip. Things go from bad to worse when Diana learns plans have changed, and theyโll be separated from William for two weeks.
Cue a Princess of Wales meltdown that ends with her rescheduling the entire tour so that Charles and Diana can visit William.
In reality, the tour schedule was never rearranged, and Diana was more than aware of her responsibilities as Princess of Wales in relation to her parenting.
โI was ready to leave William. I accepted that as part of my duty, albeit it wasnโt going to be easy,โ Diana told her biographer, Andrew Morton.
โWe didnโt see very much of him [William], but at least we were under the same sky, so to speakโ.
Did Buckingham Palace intruder Michael Fagan have a ten-minute chat with the Queen?
Answer: Fiction
The daring break-in gets a whole episode in season four, but perhaps itโs time to revoke Peter Morganโs artistic license as he takes some serious liberties with this slice of history.
On July 9, 1982, disenfranchised Londoner Michael Fagan scaled Buckingham Palaceโs 14-foot-high perimeter wall and broke into the Queenโs bedroom.
Fagan disturbs the Queen and ends up sitting on the edge of her bed, engaging in a ten-minute conversation. The Crown paints the exchange as a meeting between the common man and the monarch.
In reality, the Queen shit the bed (not literally) upon seeing Fagan. According to a 2012 interview with Fagan, the Queen did a runner the second she laid eyes on her intruder.
โShe went past me and ran out of the room, her little bare feet running across the floor,โ recalled Fagan.
Now youโve fact-check The Crown season 4, read up on everything you should expect from The Crown season 5.
