“The Crown” Hater Dame Judi Dench Was Reportedly In Talks To Play The Queen Mother In Season Five

October 25, 2022 / Posted by:

Advantage: Dench. But at what cost? Yahoo! News reports that thanks to Dame Judi Dench’s op-ed that ran in The Sunday Times admonishing Netflix for playing fast and loose with the facts on its hit show The Crown, the network has capitulated and added a disclaimer under the season five trailer indicating that anything you might hear or see about, for example, King Charles III’s menstrual product fantasies in relation to Judi’s friend Queen Consort Camilla, is merely a “fictional dramatization,” of events that may or may not have occurred and been committed to tape for all the world to hear. Now, the only “crude sensationalism,” as Dame Judi so haughtily put it, Netflix can be accused of is leaking the fact that Dame Judi herself had been in talks to play The Queen Mother this season, but reportedly turned it down, in part, because they weren’t going to pay her as much as Imelda Staunton CBE, who plays THE QUEEN.

Apparently, in real life, Dame beats CBE, but when playing the Game of Thrones, THE QUEEN always wins. Even if it’s all just make-believe nonsense. Yahoo! News reports:

Judi Dench and pal Camilla, Queen Consort of the United Kingdom

In the immortal words of Azealia Banks, the girls are fighting! The girls being, in this case, Dame Judi Dench and Netflix’s The Crown. Dench successfully bullied the streaming service into including a disclaimer that the show is all a work of imagination, but the Royal Family fictionalization clearly did not take her provocation lying down.

This new feud is all playing out quite literally in the pages of The Times, where Dench published her open letter accusing the series of “crude sensationalism.” Now, a source tells the same paper that the production was befuddled by the Oscar winner’s complaints, as she had been in talks to appear on the latest season of the show.

The Crown sources divulge that talks for Dench to play the Queen Mother (a role that eventually went to Marcia Warren) “went on for a few weeks,” going so far that she actually met with the production team. She reportedly dug the script, and “Both sides were taking it seriously,” the Times insider claims.

There are a few reasons given for why Dench didn’t end up taking the role, including that the part was too small for someone of her stature and that she was “concerned that taking the role could compromise her relationship with the royal family.” (She is, the Times notes, “a friend of Queen Camilla.”) The outlet also states that the show has “a firm rule” that no actor should earn more than the person playing the Queen (in this case, Imelda Staunton).

I guess we have Claire Foy to thank for that The Queen Gets The Most Coins rule. Still, it took Netflix almost as long to run Claire her back pay as it did for them to finally come around to adding a disclaimer to the text description on the YouTube trailer only, something they have been resisting since like four Queens ago (five if you include THE QUEEN). The text reads:

Inspired by real events, this fictional dramatisation tells the story of Queen Elizabeth II and the political and personal events that shaped her reign.”

If Dame Judi had spent a little more time reading about and watching the show instead of learning about The Crown through third-party sources like Camilla, she’d have known the rules and probably wouldn’t have bothered to audition. Dame Judi should have just sat there and ate her figgy pudding.

Pic: Aurorer Marechal/ABACA/INSTARima/Cover Images

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