‘The Crown’ is a ‘cruel’ and ‘untrue’ portrayal of Princess Diana’s life: friend
Princess Diana’s story came to a close with the first part of Season 6 of “The Crown.”
The first four episodes of the final season dropped earlier this month — and detailed her love affair with Egyptian billionaire Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla), their untimely deaths and Dodi’s relationship with his father, Mohamed al-Fayed.
However, the royal drama seems to be chock-full of historical inaccuracies — according to BBC correspondent and Mohamed’s onetime spokesman Michael Cole.
Cole told the Sun how the show’s “malicious” scenes are hurtful to the reputations of the Princess of Wales (Elizabeth Debicki) and the film producer.
The two died in a car crash in Paris in August 1997.
Cole insisted that producers of the series did “not respect Diana” and that the show is “a travesty of the truth” and portrays the couple’s serious romance as a short rendezvous.
“It’s the complete opposite [of the truth], and completely cruel, and unnecessarily so, and they’ve got it wrong, because … it’s drama,” he said, adding that Diana and Dodi were “in love.”
Mohamed (Salim Daw) is presented as a matchmaker between his son and the princess, appearing as a villain trying to savagely get them together for his personal gain.
But this was far from real life. “[Mohamed] did not somehow conjure this relationship, this romance, this love affair,” Cole alleged.
“Quite the reverse. He was there to be supportive, but he was not promoting it in any way. To say that he was is injurious, it’s nasty. It’s untrue,” he scoffed.
The show also depicts Dodi breaking off his engagement to model Kelly Fisher (Erin Richards) and scurrying to be with Diana — after his father told him to.
“It’s impossible for anybody to make anybody else fall in love with someone,” Cole said.
He went on: “Mohamed was a remarkable man in many, many ways. But even he would have never claimed to be able to make two adult people fall in love with each other. It’s ridiculous.”
Another instance in “The Crown” that Cole felt was inaccurate was the moment where Mohamed hires photographer Mario Brenna to capture the infamous kiss between Dodi and Diana on Mohamed’s yacht, the Jonikal.
Cole alleged that Brenna was already in Sardinia, and by pure happenstance, he found the duo in a lip-lock.
“He saw a blond woman on a deck and he thought it was somebody he knew. And as he approached, he suddenly realized it was Diana. And he took a very, very long-range, fuzzy photograph,” Cole claimed.
“Mohamed, far from conspiring to bring about this photograph or commissioning it from Mario Brenna, he then actually sued the agent who sold the photograph. That’s how badly he felt.”
The journalist then claimed that Diana’s eldest son, Prince William, did like Dodi, despite the opposite being played out on “The Crown.”
In one scene, a teenage William (Rufus Kampa) calls Dodi “weird” while on the phone with his mom.
Cole denied this interaction, saying that it was “absolutely untrue.”
“She would never have done anything that would have embarrassed them and made them subject to bullying at school and teasing,” he said of Diana and her kids.
