“They were never intended as ghosts”: The Crown’s Suzanne Mackie Clears the 1 Criticism That Has Plagued the Show Since Forever
The historical drama TV series The Crown has finally come to an end with the release of the sixth season. This final season was released in two parts, with the first consisting of four episodes released on November 16, and the last episodes released as the second part nearly a month later. The series, set between 1947 and 2005, depicts the reign of the late Queen Elizabeth II, from her wedding in 1947 to the early 21st century.
While the first four seasons of the show were highly praised, the last two seasons started being criticized for their historical inaccuracies and other controversial elements. One of the things that the show was highly criticized for was the ghosts shown in The Crown. As such, executive producer Suzanne Mackie has come forward with an explanation for it.
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Suzanne Mackie Clarifies the Appearance of Ghosts in The Crown
As far as the depiction of historical and other legendary figures, living or dead, in media is concerned, often the production ends up deviating from the source of the material which then obviously becomes a subject of controversy and disagreement between the viewers and other people.
In the first part of the sixth season, Prince Charles III (Dominic West) and Queen Elizabeth (Imelda Staunton) have visions of Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) after her death due to a tragic car accident. Mohamed Al-Fayed (Salim Daw) also had visions of his son Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla), who also passed away in the same accident as Princess Diana.
These visions were highly criticized and The Crown‘s executive producer Suzanne Mackie is aware of it. When asked if she would like to clear up or respond to a critical reaction towards the first part of the sixth season, she told The Hollywood Reporter:
“I’d say the thing that might’ve been slightly misunderstood was the ghosts, because they were never intended as ghosts. I think for anyone that’s experienced sudden grief, or grief generally, and the intensity of grief, the realization that someone is simply not there anymore is so hard to comprehend.”
Mackie explained that in such cases, people often feel the need to and are even prompted by therapists to have a conversation with the person they have lost. Since Princess Diana was such an enigma, it was obviously hard for the people close to her to accept her demise.
The Visions Were Written With Greater Intent
More often than not, messages or the true meaning of a piece of media get misconstrued. In such cases, communication is very important so that real intentions behind certain things are explained. Suzanne Mackie took matters into her own hands to make sure that the visions in The Crown were not misunderstood.
Explaining further about the visions, Mackie told The Hollywood Reporter how British screenwriter Peter Morgan wrote The Crown Season 6 from “a place of deep connection”, saying:
“It was written from a place of deep connection to Peter, who has lots of this experienced grief. Peter always writes from a very deep place within himself. He never writes casually; he never writes superficially. It’s always very connected into something he would feel profoundly aware of.”
So, this whole accusation about the appearance of ghosts feels wrong to Mackie and her team because it was never written in that sense. But as the media is open to interpretation, neither party can be accused of anything.
