Daniela Elser: The Crown controversy highlights issue with Meghan and Harry’s Netflix deal

OPINION:

What price love?

It’s an age-old question but mark it down kids, we might finally have an answer on November 9 when the new season of The Crown drops. Am I being a tad melodramatic? Bien sûr but then what is the royal soapie if not overwrought?

I’m talking about the love of family here versus the reportedly gargantuan sum of money Netflix is paying Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

The fifth season of the drama is only days away and, if initial reviews are to be believed, then we are a set for a 10-hour meander through the final miserable chapter in the marriage of Charles and Diana, the prince having a crack at unseating his mother from the throne and Queen Elizabeth’s various failings as a mother. (Dominic West’s Charles says to Imelda Staunton’s sovereign at one point, “If we were an ordinary family and social services came to visit they would have thrown us into care and you into jail.”)

Now, there’s a straightforward chuntering column to write here, pointing out all of the show’s inaccuracies and getting a bit huffy about the streamer’s wilful melding of real life and downright fiction.

But what is much more fraught to consider is the Waleses’ second son Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, a man who just happens to now be on Netflix’s payroll.

Yes, that Harry. The one and the same man who has spent years railing against the fact his life has been (and is) picked over by the press, transformed into a saleable commodity is now accepting tens and tens of millions of dollars from a company that is commodifying and exploiting his own family.

Huh.

In September 2020, Harry and wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex announced that they had inked a deal with the entertainment colossus to make “content that informs but also gives hope,” with the self-exiled duo pocketing somewhere around $170 million for their efforts. (What are those efforts? No one has seen a second of footage of either his documentary about his Invictus games or the mysterious project the duo has been filming.)

Still, back in 2020, only three series of The Crown had aired and the whole offering was far enough away from the present and removed from recent-ish events that any concerns about them getting into bed with Netflix felt too theoretical.

Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana in season 5 of The Crown. Photo / Netflix

Now though, the production has arrived squarely in the ‘90s and has begun to hit much closer to the contemporary bone.

In February 2021, the Duke tried to square away his and Meghan’s decision to work for Netflix, offering up relatively feeble rationale when asked about this situation in an interview with nightmare diner and late night host James Corden. In what amounted to a Hollywood Dorothy Dixer, Corden asked his guest for his thoughts on the streamer’s flagship show as they careened about Los Angeles in an open-topped bus with a British tea trolley crashing about the place.

Harry (wouldn’t you know!) had a very handy answer ready to go, saying: “They don’t pretend to be news. It’s fictional, but it’s loosely based on the truth. Of course it’s not strictly accurate. It gives you a rough idea about what that lifestyle is, the pressures of putting duty and service above family and everything else, what can come from that.

“I am way more comfortable with The Crown than I am seeing stories written about my family or my wife. That [The Crown] is obviously fiction, take it how you will.”

It was a feeble answer then – and now, nearly two years on and with his parents and grandparents’ travails about to be picked over by the streaming giant’s, it is a hollow defence.

I wonder, is Harry still “comfortable” with a series that not only leverages his parents’ misery for subscribers’ viewing pleasure but which also, reportedly, makes things up about them?

In one scene in the new series, Charles “summons” (according to the Times) Prime Minister John Major (Jonny Lee Miller) “for a secret meeting and effectively [pitches] to replace his mother”.

West’s Charles says: “For almost 60 years my great-great-grandfather Edward VII was kept waiting in the wings. He longed to be given responsibilities but his mother refused. And yet when his time came he proved his doubters wrong and his reign was a triumph.”

Dominic West as prince Charles, Teddy Hawley as Prince Harry, Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana and Timothee Sambor as Prince William in season 5 of The Crown. Photo / Netflix

However, the real Major has come out and blasted the Emmy-winner, labelling it “a barrel-load of malicious nonsense”.

Or what of Queen Elizabeth and certain scenes that her biographer Robert Hardman in one instance described as “off-the-scale drivel”?

As of Wednesday, viewers will be treated to the sight of Her Majesty, according to a Daily Mail report, in what Hardman has called “full imperial mode” asking Major to pay for “an expensive overhaul if not a replacement” of the royal yacht Britannia, before asking Tony Blair the same thing when he takes over. According to Hardman, both Major and Blair have denied this ever took place, and he writes that this is “either [a] deliberate falsehood, or Morgan and his researchers have done a dismal job”.

I’m curious, just how “comfortable” will Harry be seeing his beloved grandmother portrayed like this?

Likewise a scene where Her Majesty reportedly “scolds” Boris Yeltsin in 1994 for demolishing the house where her distant relatives the Romanovs were killed, calling it “an act of great disrespect to my family”.

Hardman writes that “the idea that the Queen was so inept that she would berate any world leader who had just invited her on a state visit is off-the-scale drivel” and that “the series ditches the Queen’s genuine role as a canny stateswoman at a pivotal moment in East/West relations and instead paints her as a prickly, self-centred sentimentalist”.

Then there is the Panorama situation. Last year’s inquiry headed by Lord Dyson found that disgraced journalist Martin Bashir essentially lied to and manipulated Diana to get her to tell all on camera by playing to her paranoia and fears. The hour-long sit-down was not just a miscalculation on Diana’s part but a turning point that irrevocably changed the course of her life. Within weeks of it airing, the Queen wrote to the Waleses telling them it was time to divorce, something that the Princess reportedly never wanted.

After Lord Dyson released his findings, Prince William said a statement that the interview should “should never be aired again”.

“It effectively established a false narrative which, for over a quarter of a century, has been commercialised by the BBC and others,” he said.

Harry, meanwhile, released a statement calling out the “culture of exploitation and unethical practices ultimately took her life”.

And yet, that Panorama interview features in two episodes of the forthcoming series, according to reports while The Sun has reported that “the streaming giant has exaggerated the language and made up huge sections of conversation.

Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki, playing Diana, and Prasanna Puwanarajah who plays Bashir, worked with voice and movement coaches, according to the Guardian, “to build an accurate version of the interview”.

Prince Harry wears an Oura wellness ring during a visit to Bondi Beach with Meghan Markle. Photo / Getty Images

Everyone still “comfortable” here?

The interesting thing to keep in mind here is that Harry and Meghan have spoken out previously when one of the billion-dollar companies that they do business with has supported projects that don’t align with their values. Throughout the pandemic, much to the Sussexes’ credit, they have campaigned for vaccine equality. However, they are also in bed, commercially speaking, with Spotify, the same platform that boasts Joe Rogan, whose podcast has featured Covid vaccine sceptics.

In January, the couple issued a statement saying they “continued to express” their “concerns”.

“We look to Spotify to meet this moment and are committed to continuing our work together as it does.”

If the Duke and Duchess are willing to voice their discontent and independence in an instance where they disagreed with another project their corporate partner was putting out, what are we to make of their silence about The Crown’s highly malleable approach to the truth?

The problem with the hit series is that its slavish devotion to meticulously recreating outfits and the attention to detail on a visual level would seem to carry with it a tacit implication that the rest of the series and the events and conversations are just as faithfully reproduced.

Robert Lacey, the show’s historical consultant, said in an interview in 2017: “I defend very strongly that this show recreates the past very plausibly.”

Therein lies the issue: The Crown sells a “plausible” version of events that are very easy to believe, melding creative licence with history. How is anyone, aside from a royal Kremlinologist, to know what is real and what is just the work of showrunner Peter Morgan’s imagination?

Still, his job is to entertain us.

So what is Harry’s job these days? He and Meghan still religiously use their royal titles and yet continue to distance themselves from Buckingham Palace. In February 2021, they put out a statement saying “service is universal,” a credo that has seen them do … I’m not sure what exactly. (But he has managed to turn out a memoir as part of his reported $74 million three-book deal with Penguin Random House and Meghan has released a podcast series for Spotify that is about as thought-provoking as a first-year gender studies essay and as interesting as reading as the back of a Weetbix box.)

Last year, Harry was appointed to a commission on information disorder run by the US think-tank the Aspen Institute, with the Duke, in November last year, calling online misinformation as a “global humanitarian issue”. Too right.

But where is that completely legitimate concern and sense of urgency about misinformation when it comes to Netflix and The Crown? Harry’s fraught relationship with his family might be the stuff of legend by now, but if truth matters then … shouldn’t it always matter, not just when it suits?

Here’s some food for thought. The Crown head honcho Peter Morgan has said that the series will end around about the April 2005 wedding of Charles and Camilla, which would be several months after Harry was forced to apologise after being photographed in a Nazi costume at a party in January that year. Who knows? He might just have something to say about the show one day, after all.

• Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.