Joy Behar is challenging Judi Dench over Season 5 of “The Crown.”
After Dench wrote an open letter to the Times calling the Netflix series “crude sensationalism” and “an inaccurate and hurtful account of history,” the daytime talk show host said she disagrees.
“This dame disagrees with Dame Judi Dench, because they tell you at the top that it is not a documentary, and if you have a brain, you can figure out that the writers have used history,” Behar said.
“And if it’s documented history, then we can believe it, but we’re not going to believe a conversation that’s going on in the bedroom of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. Nobody was there but the two of them, so you don’t believe that part. But the historical part, you believe,” she continued.
Whoopi Goldberg fired back at Behar, saying she thought Dench was specifically criticizing a plot where Prince Philip had an affair that reportedly never happened.
The upcoming season of “The Crown” reportedly suggests that Philip was “pursuing an affair” with Penny Knatchbull, Countess Mountbatten of Burma.
“He had several affairs, apparently, but not this one,” Behar joked in response to Goldberg.
“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin agreed with Goldberg, pushing back against Behar.
“I do think a little disclaimer would be really perfect, thank you. I will say this, one of the pushback that they’re getting is about Lady Diana’s death … they’re not going to show what really happened, but I think we all remember how tragic that was, and history is ugly sometimes, and I don’t think there’s a problem showing it,” Hostin said.
“I think that storyline in particular, that people are saying you can’t show her death is almost bastardizing history. It’s something we should never forget what happened to Princess Diana.”
While Dench — who is a friend of Queen Consort Camilla — admitted that “The Crown” was a “brilliant but fictionalized account of events,” she wrote in her letter that she fears “a significant number of viewers, particularly overseas, may take its version of history as being wholly true.”
“Indeed, 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,” Dench wrote.
The trailer for Season 5 of “The Crown” — which drops on Netflix Nov. 9 — was released Thursday, and shows the royal family in “genuine crisis.” The teaser showed shots of Dominic West as Prince Charles, Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana, Jonathan Pryce as Prince Philip and Lesley Manville as Princess Margaret.