The Crown’s Season 5 doesn’t premiere for another eleven months or so, but they’re currently filming the season all over the UK. This season will deal with the 1990s, the “War of the Waleses,” Diana’s Panorama interview, and Charles’s continuing relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles. Prince Charles is really mad that he can’t bully Peter Morgan and Netflix out of revealing just how badly he treated Diana. We’ve already been gifted with dozens of stories about how Charles and Prince William are incandescent with rage at The Crown and Netflix, and how they’re trying to throw their weight around and deny Netflix’s requests to film on royal or royal-adjacent property. While The Crown didn’t film at Althorp, they did film at Kensington Gardens AND the BBC parking lot. LMAO. And now the Daily Mail claims that Eton refused Netflix’s request to film there.
Netflix was barred from using Eton College as a filming location for The Crown after the streaming giant was accused of publishing a ‘sinister’ tweet about the Royal Family, it has been revealed. The £14,000-a-term all boys school, in Windsor, Berkshire, said it wanted nothing to do with the hit series, which chronicles the lives of the British monarchy throughout the 20th century.
It comes after senior palace sources reacted with anger in December last year after Netflix posted a tweet inviting viewers to watch a documentary on Princess Diana which they claimed would provide ‘answers’ to criticism of its flagship drama. Critics had said The Crown’s account of the breakdown of Prince Charles’s marriage to the Princess of Wales was ‘distorted and at times downright inaccurate’.
‘Eton didn’t want anything to do with The Crown,’ a source at the 581-year-old school told the Daily Mail. ‘It’s very much aware of the criticism of the series.’
Netflix’s post promoting Diana: In Her Own Words, was accompanied by a video that painted the Duchess of Cornwall in a particularly unedifying light by appearing to imply that she was seeking to remain romantically involved with Charles right at the start of his marriage to the Diana. The post was accused of prompting a wave of online abuse towards both Prince Charles and Camilla – with many of the messages too vile to print.
While Eton shunned the hit series following the furore, the historic college’s rival, Winchester College, in Hampshire, was chosen as a filming site instead. The Crown’s forthcoming series is set to be controversial, as it will cover Prince William’s reaction to his parents’ marital breakdown. Eton’s decision follows in the footsteps of Buckingham Palace and Althorp, the stately home owned by Diana’s brother.
A spokesman for Eton College declined to comment. A Netflix spokesman denied that it had made an official request to film at school, but confirmed: ‘We have, however, been filming at Winchester College.’
Yeah, I wonder if Netflix even asked Eton? And if they did ask, did they honestly expect to film there, or was it more of a “it never hurts to ask” sort of thing? What’s remarkable about The Crown is how often they find historic properties which easily double as the real thing. I’m sure no one at Netflix is like “oh no, we can’t film at Eton, we should abandon this storyline.” Oh, I doubt Netflix asked to film at Buckingham Palace entirely. Netflix knows that they’re pissing off the Windsors and they don’t give a sh-t. And that upsets the Windsors even more, that they don’t have some kind of angle to get Netflix on their side.
The whole side-angle about how Netflix published a tweet which “painted the Duchess of Cornwall in a particularly unedifying light by appearing to imply that she was seeking to remain romantically involved with Charles right at the start of his marriage” to Diana… it was literally a tweet with audio of Diana’s own voice, describing how Camilla cozied up to her before Diana and Charles were married. They’re truly mad that Diana’s voice is still out there and that people are still listening!
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Netflix.
Oh no, not a “sinister tweet” – whatever shall they do?!!!
I saw Royalists celebrating this alleged story. I don’t think Netflix asked Eton to film on their premises but Eton is looking to secure the future King as a student so they would refuse the offer if they were asked.
The royalists are all going to hate-watch the series anyway, so it’s a win-win for Netflix who don’t have to spend a penny promoting it.
@Elizabeth Regina: Absolutely.
I was thinking the same. Eton won’t do anything to anger the Cambridges, and risk loosing the royal children as students.
Wonder if there will still be a throne to have by the time he’s old enough to attend
I wonder what happens if he chooses UCLA or USC Santa Barbara…😉🤪
I kind of love how the DM has this whole story about Eton saying no and then the Netflix spokesperson is like, yeah we never made an official request. (I do wonder if they put some feelers out though and were told it wasn’t going to happen?) I wouldn’t be surprised though if Eton has a policy against allowing filming there, I think for a place like that once you start opening it up to filming you would be flooded with requests, and if you only say yes once in a while then it seems you’re giving approval to that production, you know? Anyway when we were in Toronto years ago they said that the University of Toronto gets used a lot as a stand-in for places like Yale because its harder (maybe impossible?) to get permission to film at some of the Ivy league schools so they often just sub in University of Toronto.
But maybe they do allow filming on a regular basis, I don’t know.
Can confirm about U of T ( I think the most famous example is Good Will Hunting) – the downtown campus has some beautiful gothic buildings and I imagine it’s cheaper to film here, too.
For the Social Network they filmed on the Johns Hopkins campus in Baltimore to represent Harvard because Harvard doesn’t allow filming. Eton is probably the same.
I’ll take “Things That Don’t Matter in the Slightest” for $200, LeVar.
LeVar!
Wish we could up-vote comments!
+1
That’s the whole thing with royal reporting in the tabloids, make a bunch of assumption and bury the truth in the last two sentences of the article. Fall 2022 promise to be great for royal watching between Harry’s memoir, the Crown and Will and Kate comingg to the US.
@Woke – Seriously??? Do you think the Lamebridges will come the USA? With the potential of new lockdowns in the UK, I do not see Baldy & Wiglet going anywhere, especially the USA.
Either they come for their stupid Earthshot thing, or we get to mock them relentlessly for being too cowardly to brave US reporters and US paparazzi like REAL celebrities do. But the Covid Train Tour is proof enough that they won’t let travel restrictions stop them if they can find an ‘essential work’ loophole.
I highly doubt that any viewers of the Crown are going to say “Huh, I thought this was documentary, but that looks like Winchester college, not Eton! Now my illusions are in tatters. Charles was right about everything.”
I’m guessing that if you pay all that money for the prestige of Eton, you pay to not have it used as a filming location. So pedestrian!
And keeping the possible future pupil the FFFK’s family happy never hurt, either.
Whether or not Netflix asked, I wouldn’t be surprised it Eton rejects *all* productions. I imagine they want to keep their elitist and eXcLuSiVe image so having a bunch of cameras around doesn’t mesh well with that.
Exactly, its not just the UK royal family that send their children to Eton. it is also a boarding school, and they wouldn’t want the disruption that comes with filming.
Exactly. Publicity? How vulgar!
The number of worldwide The Crown viewers who even know what Eton College vs. Winchester College look like is minute. Even if Netflix asked Eton’s men in grey they would say no automatically, as they’ve all already endured William’s, um, er–personality– while he was a student and they do not want to poke the bear.
Is it just me or is that NOT proper use of the word “unedifying”? Is it just me or does that particular use of the word make NO sense??
I was running that through my head a lot, too, trying to figure out their word choice. It really makes no sense in the context of that statement. They’ve got some real bottom-of-the-barrel writers.
They, the Royals, would be much better off if they would just say fake entertainment, old history, move on and shrug instead of taking offense huffing and implying that its still relevant. Works for Hillary and Trump.
When you have sins to hide and propaganda to maintain, “the past is never dead. It isn’t even past.” 😈😉😎
“A spokesman for Eton College declined to comment” says it all- it shows that the “sources” quoted further up were entirely made up. I now assume that when “sources” are quoted by the gutter press, they are projecting, conjecturing, lying, or when talking about Meghan and Harry, they’ve been briefed by KP. I do not know why what the tabloids do is still called journalism. At the very least, the tabloids are a boil on the body politic, and at worst, a direct threat to truth, reality, the real need for freedom of the press, and democracy itself.
It seemed the Crown became a problem with the royals when the Diana episodes started.