The Duchess of York has refuted claims she “made repeated contact” withThe Crown producers to advise them on portraying the royal family.
On Friday (28 October), a spokesperson for Sarah Ferguson denied the suggestion that Prince Andrew’s former wife had offered to provide “advice and background information” to the makers of the hit Netflix show.
It was earlier reported in theDaily Mail that Ferguson, 63, had reached out to the show’s executive producer Andy Harries multiple times “via emails and on the phone”, according to an annonymous source.
Per the source, the duchess had claimed “she had an inside view” of the royal family “which would make her invaluable to the show as a consultant”.
In a recent statement to The Daily Mail, a representative for the duchess said she “did not discuss The Crown or any idea of helping with the series in any way”.
They added: “Such a suggestion was made separately at one point by a mutual friend, but was not progressed by either side.”
Ferguson’s conversations with Harries were about adapting her romance novel Her Heart For A Compass into a TV series, the spokesperson also clarified.
Last year, Ferguson reacted to the limited screen time of her character in season four of The Crown during an interview with Town & Country magazine.
“Hello, where’s Fergie?” she joked at the time.
The publication also reported that she wrote to Harries, saying: “Why can’t I help with my character?”
Ferguson’s denial comes amid criticisism of the Netflix show. Earlier this month, Dame Judi Dench called for The Crown to include a disclaimer which identifies it as a “fictionalised drama”.
“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,” she wrote in a letter to The Times, dated 19 October.
Following the publication of Dench’s open letter, Netflix have added a “fictional” disclaimer to the trailer for season five of The Crown, which will be released on 9 November.
The latest installment of The Crown covers the years between the early to mid-1990s.
The forthcoming season is expected to depict the struggles in then Prince Charles’ marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales.
