Netflix drama The Crown may risk angering the Royal Family in an upcoming episode from the show’s final series.
In the controversial episode, Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) is seen chatting on a yacht with her boyfriend Dodi Al Fayed (Khalid Abdalla) when she likens her wedding day to Charles to stepping on a landmine.
Yet a royal biographer has insisted the late Princess would never have made such a comparison.
Discussing the harrowing stories of landmine victims after her visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina in August 1997, Diana tells Dodi about the Landmine Survivors Network.
She says: ‘A man called Ken Rutherford drew my attention to it. He started the Landmine Survivors Network. After his jeep hit a landmine in Somalia he lost both of his legs.
Drama: The Crown has risked angering the Royal Family as it depicts Princess Diana ‘wedding day slur’ in final series of the hit Netflix show
Controversial: Princess Diana is seen chatting on a yacht with her boyfriend Dodi Al Fayed in the episode when she likens her wedding day to Charles to stepping on a landmine (Charles and Diana pictured on the royal balcony in 1981)
‘He said to me every survivor has a date of the day they stepped on the landmine. He said, “Mine was December 16, 1963”. I said, “Mine was 29 July, 1981 — my wedding day”.’
But royal biographer Ingrid Seward has contested the line in the drama.
Ingrid, who knew Diana, told The Sun: ‘Diana would never have said anything like that. I think it is an unfortunate comparison.
‘I think the mere fact that The Crown is depicting Diana’s life and her death is exploiting her memory so they can put into her mouth anything that they want to — however distasteful people might find it.’
Referring to Diana’s work to raise awareness of landmines, she said: ‘It was very important – it was her big thing and it was a great success too. It is something that she will always be remembered for.’
The Ottawa Treaty which banned landmines was signed in December 1997, just three months after her death.
have contacted Netflix for comment.
The emotional first four episodes of the sixth and final series of The Crown cover the tragic car crash in Paris that killed Princess Diana in August 1997 – alongside her lover Dodi Fayed and their chauffeur Henri Paul.
Viewers also see the Royal Family’s reaction to it, as well as the summer holiday Diana and Dodi enjoyed in St Tropez prior to the tragedy.
Speaking out: But royal biographer Ingrid Seward has contested the line in the drama, ‘Diana would never have said anything like that. I think it is an unfortunate comparison’
Final series: Elizabeth Debicki plays Princess Diana in the final series of The Crown. The first four episodes not only cover the fatal car crash in Paris but also Diana and Dodi’s summer holiday in St Tropez, which came before the tragedy
The Paris scenes were shot in the French capital, while a yacht was hired for the St Tropez scenes, although these were actually filmed in Mallorca.
For sensitivity reasons the exact moment of Diana’s death is not re-created, but there are controversial scenes in which Charles tenderly converses with an imaginary Diana in the cabin of the royal plane as he accompanies her body from Paris to London, and later when she also appears to the Queen.
Critics who have seen these scenes called them ‘farcical’ for portraying Diana as a ghost, but series creator Peter Morgan has insisted that wasn’t the intention.
‘I never imagined it as Diana’s ghost in the traditional sense,’ he told Variety magazine. ‘It was her continuing to live vividly in the minds of those she has left behind.’