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The Crown's Gillian Anderson says show could have been "worse" about royals

Photo credit: Des Willie - Netflix
Photo credit: Des Willie - Netflix

From Harper's BAZAAR

Gillian Anderson is the latest member of The Crown cast to weigh in on the calls to add a fiction disclaimer to the series.

The actress plays Margaret Thatcher in season four of the hit Netflix show, and was recently nominated for a Supporting Actress Golden Globe for her performance.

"It's so obvious that we're doing a TV show and that these are characters based on real-life people," Anderson told InStyle. "To me, it just felt like drama for the sake of drama. But I get that there are a lot of people invested."

Photo credit: Des Willie - Netflix
Photo credit: Des Willie - Netflix

Anderson also said that The Crown had left out some of the most unsavoury parts of the royal family's history.

"There's a lot of stuff that could have been written about—but was not—that is so much worse than what ended up in the show," she continued. "There has been kindness extended in certain areas where it didn't have to be."

In November, UK culture secretary Oliver Dowden told the Mail on Sunday that planned to write Netflix requesting the company add a "health warning" to clarify that the series is fictional, as he worried that viewers viewers "mistake fiction for fact" when watching the show; a Netflix spokesperson subsequently told Variety that the streaming service had "no plans" to do so, as it had "always presented The Crown as a drama."

Photo credit: Jon Kopaloff - Getty Images
Photo credit: Jon Kopaloff - Getty Images

Previously, The Crown's Emma Corrin, who played Princess Diana in the show's recent season, told Variety that the series was "clearly a dramatixed version of events," but that she understood the call for a disclaimer "comes from a place of sensitivity and protectiveness of the royal family and Diana."

For his part, Josh O'Connor, who played Prince Charles, came out against UK culture secretary Oliver Dowden in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, saying: "It's pretty outrageous that he came out and said what he said."

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