The Crown is a travesty – here’s everything Netflix’s new series got wrong, fumes friend of Princess Diana and Dodi
THE Crown has come under fresh fire as one former Diana insider has labeled the first four episodes as a ‘travesty of the truth’.
Netflix has opted to release the sixth and final series of the smash-hit drama in two separate instalments.
The first four episodes depict controversial events from the late 90’s which include the romance of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed, son of Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed.
It also shows the aftermath of the tragic accident in Paris in 1997 where both of the pair, as well as their driver Henri Paul succumbed to their injuries sustained from the infamous car crash.
However, the depiction of the events has come under fresh fire from former BBC Royal Correspondent Michael Cole, who was the press secretary for Al Fayed at the time of the accident.
He claims he is one of the only people still alive that knew all three people who were killed in the car crash, and he has slammed the show for “cruel” and “malicious” scenes that were watched worldwide.
Diana was happy to be with Dodi
Towards the third episode of the series, Diana is shown to be excited to be coming home and the structured romance between herself and Dodi Fayed to be cooling down.
However, Michael Cole told The Sun, that was far from the case and he insists she loved her time with the film producer.
He admitted that Princess Diana – far from wanting to come home – absolutely loved being on holiday with Dodi and they had top secret phone conversations regularly afterward.
“She would not have gone into a relationship if she didn’t think it was a sincere one that would last,” he insisted.
“Diana rang me at my home in South Kensington, and she said, ‘Michael, we are sitting here in Kensington Palace, suffering from the most awful withdrawal symptoms, because we’ve had the most wonderful holiday of our lives’.”
Michael continued: “She said, ‘Thank you for arranging it.’ Well, I had done very little. What I didn’t know and she didn’t tell me was that Dodi had arranged to hook up with her [over the phone].
“The phone lines between his apartment on Park Lane and Kensington Palace across Hyde Park were burning up because they were talking to each other.
“They were seeing each other unknown to me, and one evening, they went to a private cinema in Soho to look at a film they wanted to see.
“She was very interested in films. He was telling her about the films he was going to make.”
He also thinks that the producers of the series The Crown producers did, “not respect Diana,” as he insists the 1997 romance was not simply a summer fling as was depicted in the show.
“I think people who say that this was just a summer fling. I don’t think they really respect Diana,” Cole said.
“They don’t because I don’t think she was that sort of person. She was utterly sincere person.”
When asked directly if the pair were “in love” with each other and committed to their future together, Michael confirmed: “I do. I do.”
The commentator also revealed that the series depicted “the complete opposite” of what he knew to be the truth as he said the producers have “got it wrong.”
He added: “It’s the complete opposite [of the truth], and completely cruel, and unnecessarily so, and they’ve got it wrong, because okay, we know it’s drama.
“They’re aiming for a good story and we understand that, but these were real people. And these are very serious allegations.”
Diana’s secret trips
Michael then went onto reveal how the pair took secret incognito trips together abroad away from the cameras.
He alleges that the couple opted to travel to Paris together on a separate occasion before the fateful night in 1997.
He told The Sun: “Diana and Dodi had gone to Paris on a quiet weekend that nobody ever knew about.”
“Then they went away together on the boat. And until that photograph was published, nobody knew and they wanted to keep their, their relationship very much confidential.”
Dodi loved Diana – he was NOT pushed
In the new episodes of season six, Mohamed was depicted as someone who was trying to purposely set up Princess Diana and his son Dodi to somehow get back at the establishment.
However, Michael Cole insists that the depiction in the Netflix drama could not be further from the truth.
“Whatever they did was okay by him, but he did not somehow conjure this relationship, this romance, this love affair,” Cole says.
“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.”
The series shows Dodi reluctantly breaking off his engagement to American model Kelly Fisher to try his luck with Princess Diana at his father’s insistence.
In the series, he is shown to – at times – be slightly reluctant in the romance, even attempting to stand up to his father in a tense fake phone call in the Ritz Hotel in front of Diana after he attempted to propose to her.
However, Michael says that Dodi was not reluctant at all, and was even willing to put up with the commotion that surrounded the global personality.
He thinks the pair were both ‘sincere’ about their love for each other as he says: “Dodi first of all adored her. And she hadn’t had enough people in her life, telling her she was wonderful. He did.
“He adored her. And I’m quite sure that she was sincere about the relationship.”
“She was a high maintenance girl and Dodi had the means to look after her and would have looked after.”
“Diana put her eyes to heaven, hoping it would be. But Dodi wanted to protect her. He wanted to keep her safe and sound.”
Far from badgering his son to move things along quicker and faster with The Princess, the former aide reveals how Mohamed told his son to take things slower.
“I was there and he was saying to Dodi, ‘Shway shway,’ which is Arabic for slow down. He said, ‘enjoy yourself, relax, don’t push anything’. Just enjoy yourself.”
He added: “[It’s] literally the opposite of The Crown.”
When asked about the citizenship factor depicted in the show, Michael strenuously denied anything of the sort.
The former insider even admitted that he was personally hurt by what the events that the hit series depicts.
“[It’s got] absolutely nothing to do with that. And, I mean, it’s a travesty of the truth.
“And I’m very upset about that. It’s impossible for anybody to make anybody else fall in love with someone.”
No “engineering”
In the hit series, Princess Diana and Dodi’s night in Paris is shown to almost be an inconvenient stopover on the way home, specifically so Dodi could propose to her, at his father’s request.
However, the insider claims there was categorically no engineering of the couple from Mohamed Al Fayed and that they were simply happy to be with one another.
He insists: “It was utterly untrue, utterly untrue.”
“Muhammad 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.”
“It’s absurd to think that he could somehow conjure this relationship for people and rather like a puppet master. He was not a magician.
“The truth of the matter was that Dodi and Diana knew each other ten years before that fateful summer of 1997. They knew each other socially. And they saw each other from time to time at social events film premieres.”
One scene in The Crown depicts Diana and Dodi getting straight into a limo as soon as they landed in Paris.
At the direct orders of Mohamed Al Fayed, the couple were driven to Villa Windsor, and as such she missed a phone call with her royal sons.
When asked about this encounter, Michael was appalled by the suggestion and slammed the scenes as “malicious”.
“It is completely malicious, I think. And it’s, it’s very, very unkind and cruel,” he repeated.
He also said that rather than being the place of an inconvenient flight connection as was hinted at, the pair specifically wanted to go and stay in Paris on that fateful evening in 1997.
“Like many couples, they wanted the last night of their holiday to be in the City of Light, the City of Romance in Paris, they wanted to go back there before she went back to Britain.
“And they took this decision together. And they wanted to be there for a last romantic evening at the end of their holiday.”
He added: “I mean, I don’t know why people want to deny that.”
Al Fayed did NOT set up the kiss
A main point of contention of the latest episodes of The Crown is the depiction of the front page kiss.
The series depicts the Harrods owner’s quest for British citizenship, and the plot lines suggest that he used Diana’s romance with his son as a way of gaining that position.
A significant part of that was his smooch on the yacht that was snapped on camera which caught the world by storm.
Piers Morgan claimed that the picture was categorically not set up by the Egyptian businessman as he even tried to deny the romance at first.
Michael Cole confirmed and echoed this sentiment as he explained: “He is represented as somehow exploit exploiting contacting a photographer called Mario Brenna and asking him to take photographs of Diana and Dodi together on the yacht,
“It’s completely untrue. He just happened to be in Sardinia, where he went every year in a rubber boat looking for, for personalities, celebrities, to film and he happened by sheer chance to come upon the boat.
“He saw a blonde woman on a deck and he thought it was somebody he knew. And as he approached, he suddenly realised it was Diana. And he took a very, very long range, fuzzy photograph.”
The show depicts Mohamed sitting in his office smiling and content with the pictures as when he flicks through the newspaper.
But Michael disputes this account as he revealed that the tycoon was in fact left utterly was furious by the attention.
He explained: “Mohamed, far from conspiring to bring about this photograph for commissioning it from Mario Brennea, he then actually sued the agent who sold the photograph. That’s how badly he felt.
“I remember when the photograph came out, I was with Dodi and Mohamed and they were devastated. Because up until that point, up into that very point, we’d kept it under wraps.”
Prince William and Harry did NOT dislike Dodi
In episode three during their last phone conversation with their mother, Prince William is shown begging his mother not to marry Dodi Fayed, even going as far as to label him “weird”.
Former insider Michael Cole insists that is another false depiction, as he claims that both Prince William and Prince Harry enjoyed their time with the film producer.
“It’s absolutely untrue,” fumed Cole.
“I saw the letters they wrote after that first holiday, the only holiday they went on, and they couldn’t have been kinder and nicer and appreciative of what went on.
“William was diving to impress his mother and me, off the highest deck of the Yacht.
“He learned how to scuba dive, Mohamed’s bodyguards had all been ex-Royal Navy, they’d been divers, and they taught him how to dive. They had a fantastic time.
“When Diana rang me to go out there, I said, ‘Look, there is a completely separate guest house, you have your own staff. You can do what you like’, and they were so happy, her and her two her two sons.
“And this is what Mrs Al Fayad said to me, she said ‘we were laughing, morning, noon and night.’ She said sometimes Diana was ‘doubled over’ with laughter.”
He added: “The most important men in her life were Prince William and Prince Harry. Those were the only two people, men who really mattered after her father died.
“She would never have done anything that would have embarrassed them and made them subject to bullying at school and teasing.”
Mohammed Al Fayad’s character was ‘assassinated’
“I think these new episodes were extraordinarily cruel, unkind and inaccurate,” declared Cole.
When asked explicitly if the new episodes were a character assassination of Mohammed he agreed: “Yes. It’s completely untrue, it’s cruel.
“It’s unnecessarily cruel. It’s gratuitously cruel, it’s unkind, and it’s pure fiction.
“He was delighted that his eldest son, and the family’s dear friend, Diana, were together. He wished them only the best. Whatever they did was okay by him, but he did not somehow conjure this relationship, this romance, this love affair.
“Quite the reverse. He was there to be supportive, but he was not promoting it in any way. And to say that he was is injurious. It’s nasty. It’s untrue.”
The former aide hinted that the character was specifically used as a plot device to create a villain.
When asked about that prospect, Michael explained: “I suppose if every good story has to have a villain, then he could be depicted in that way.”
He added: “But it’s so far from the truth. He was such a loving, kind man, and was so good with all his family and his staff and the people he knew. And with Diana and her sons, It’s so cruel.”