Why Dame Judi Dench Is Slamming “Inaccurate” The Crown Season 5

Dame Judi Dench turned her pen into a pitchfork. 

In a letter to U.K. publication The Times on Oct. 19, the Oscar-winning actress expressed her feelings about the upcoming fifth season of Netflix’s The Crown—and she did not hold back.

The 87-year-old zeroed in on one particular scene from the first episode of season five, premiering Nov. 9, which reportedly shows then-Prince Charles (Dominic West) attempting to convince former UK Prime Minister John Major (Jonny Lee Miller) to persuade Queen Elizabeth II (Imelda Staunton) to abdicate the throne.

“Given some of the wounding suggestions apparently contained in the new series—that King Charles plotted for his mother to abdicate, for example, or once suggested his mother’s parenting was so deficient that she might have deserved a jail sentence,” Dench wrote, “this is both cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent.”

Dench, who is a friend of Queen Consort Camilla Parker Bowles also wrote, “The closer the drama comes to our present times, the more freely it seems willing to blur the lines between historical accuracy and crude sensationalism” and alleged the program propagated “an inaccurate and hurtful account of history.”