Are Princess Diana, King Charles ‘The Crown’ storylines accurate? Royal expert weighs in

According to a royal expert, some of the British royal family’s storylines on “The Crown” Season 5 were not entirely accurate.

The latest season of the hit Netflix series focused on the events surrounding then-Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s public divorce, including the late royal’s 1995 “Panorama” interview.

True Royalty TV editor-in-chief Nick Bullen claims that Princess Diana’s infamous interview with Martin Bashir, in which she discussed her battle with bulimia and her unhappy marriage to Charles, was not depicted as accurately as possible on the show.

The royal expert told Us Weekly:

“Look, it’s drama. It’s fiction that’s somewhat based on fact. Virtually all of it was — certainly — sort of widened the mark.”

He added:

“I think they didn’t even go far enough in looking at how Bashir got the interview. I mean, they sort of touched on it, you know, it was incredibly fraudulent what went on there.”

Bullen hypothesized that Princess Diana was far more repentant than she appeared on camera.

According to the royal expert, Princess Diana initially believed “she’d gotten her voice out there” and believed Bashir’s claims about “security services listening to her.”

However, Bullen believes Princess Diana realized she’d made a “huge mistake” in giving the interview and “absolutely” regretted her decision as more clarity emerged.

Bullen told Us Weekly:

“To be fair, what ‘The Crown’ did get right was the fact that Charles Spencer, [Diana’s] brother, had started to have misgivings about Bashir before the interview and had tried to persuade Diana this perhaps wasn’t the right way to go about it. As we all saw in the show, Bashir was recreating bank statements, trying to claim that people were being paid by the security services. And if someone shows you that, you probably do believe it, even if you are not already paranoid about what’s going on. I think she did regret it.”

After it was revealed that Princess Diana was “duped” into doing the 1995 interview, the BBC issued a formal apology to King Charles, Prince William, and Prince Harry in July.

An independent investigation determined that Bashir deceived Princess Diana’s brother by presenting him with forged bank statements implying that individuals were being paid to keep the princess under surveillance. The investigation also discovered that Bashir later lied, telling BBC executives that he had not shown the fake documents to anyone.

Following the investigation’s findings, BBC director general Tim Davie vowed that the interview would not be aired again.

In addition to Princess Diana’s “Panorama” interview, Bullen slammed the “Crown” Season 5 storylines about then-Prince Charles and other royal family members during the 1990s as inaccurate.

Bullen claimed:

“When Charles does the handover of Hong Kong, it appears that he takes [Queen Consort Camilla] for a holiday on the Royal Yacht Britannia. Simply not true. The idea that Diana was meeting Mohamed Al-Fayed at the Windsor Horse Show. Not true. The idea that Princess Margaret and the queen are having standup round about Peter Townsend — not true.”

He concludes:

“What ‘The Crown’ is very clever at is it does take sort of enough fact to be able to spin up a version of the truth. I think people have gotta watch it with an eye to this is drama that is based on real life events. But that’s the danger … is how far the real life events go.”

Season 5 of “The Crown” is now available on Netflix.