‘The Crown’ Season 5 Addressed a 2020 Investigation Into 1 Infamous Princess Diana Interview
The Netflix series The Crown delved into many events the British royal family would prefer to keep behind closed doors. Their treatment of the late Princess Diana is no exception. The last few seasons have focused on her struggles as a princess and wife to the heir to the throne. One season 5 storyline covered an explosive 1995 interview Princess Diana gave. The show not only revealed the shocking statements she made during that interview, but also looked at the fallout. The behavior of the journalist involved, Martin Bashir, and the BBC was so out of line that it even sparked an investigation in 2020.
What did ‘The Crown’ Season 5 get right about the Princess Diana interview?
According to a YouTube video from Ms. Mojo, this part of the series is mostly accurate. The four minutes of the interview shown in The Crown Season 5 are drawn from what Princess Diana said. She did drop bombshells, such how long Prince Charles and Camilla’s tryst dated back, and her own bulimia.
However, the series also shows Princess Diana warning Queen Elizabeth about the interview ahead of time. This almost certainly did not happen, given that she was largely estranged from the royal family by the time this happened.
The Crown also touched on the fact that Bashir used underhanded tactics to convince Princess Diana to speak to him. It even refers to an investigation into what happened. Although this may sound like more made-for-TV drama, it really did happen. And the results of that investigation were shocking to many.
The 2020 inquiry into the journalist behind it
Bashir’s behavior leading up to the interview wasn’t just manipulative, it was “deceitful,” according to an independent investigation that was launched by the BBC in 2020. The network discovered that Bashir created fake bank statements in order to convince Princess Diana to trust him.
The statements made it appear as though people were being paid to spy on her. This played into Diana’s fears about the royal family. He used these documents to make her believe they were betraying her, so she would go behind their backs.
Furthermore, the people in charge at the BBC worked together to conceal Bashir’s shocking lack of journalistic integrity.
Although he admitted to creating these fake documents, Bashir said that he is still “immensely proud” of his work in the interview.
How does the royal family feel about ‘The Crown’?
The Crown is known for being loosely based on the truth, leaving room for representations that some would consider lies. The royal family is famously close-mouthed about private matters, and their reactions to the series are no exception.
According to Hello Magazine, however the royal family is very unhappy about how they are portrayed when it comes to Princess Diana. According to one insider, “No one knows what goes on behind the closed doors of the palaces and the fact Her Majesty the Queen, arguably the greatest monarch the world has ever seen, and her close descendants are now being viewed through the greasy, slanderous lens of The Crown is as horrific as it is tragic.”
