The Crown slammed for replicating Princess Diana’s wrecked Mercedes for sixth season

It’s not the first time award-winning series The Crown has sparked controversy with its portrayal of members of the British royal family.

Now the Netflix series is risking further backlash as photos have emerged of a replica of Diana’s wrecked Mercedes following her tragic car accident in 1997.

It appears that the vehicle has been recreated as a prop for the upcoming season of the series, portraying the night Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed died after the S-Class they were riding in crashed in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris, France.

One scene from The Crown series five shows the late Princess sitting down with Bashir for the 1995 Panorama interview. Photo / Netflix

Photos seen by the Daily Mail show a replica of the wrecked vehicle with a buckled front wheel, crushed bonnet and smashed windscreen. The car was reportedly moved to Paris in secret, hidden under a tarpaulin and is one of two vehicles taken there for filming last year.

The Netflix show made headlines last October when crews were seen in Paris recreating the scene of Diana’s death, while other scenes filmed in December show investigators inspecting the wreckage.

At the time, the streaming site said that “the exact moment of the crash impact will not be shown”. But since then, a source has told the Daily Mail that “a lot of people will find it quite sick that they went into such detail to recreate how the car was smashed up. I think it’s going to cause a lot of upset with the Royal Family. If it was any other family I’m not sure they’d do it.”

Netflix did not respond to further requests for comment.

The sixth and final season of the show will explore the lives of the royal family from the late 1990s to the early 2000s.

The latest series, released last year, received fierce backlash, particularly over its portrayal of Princess Diana’s infamous Panorama interview with former BBC journalist Martin Bashir.

The trailer for the fifth season was accompanied by a statement published online pointing out that the show is a “fictional dramatisation” - but the statement is yet to be added to the episodes on Netflix.

Friends of King Charles, royal experts and politicians spoke up and urged Netflix to add a disclaimer warning viewers that many scenes portrayed in The Crown never actually happened, or are exaggerations of real events.

Netflix quietly added a disclaimer to its marketing for the series in 2022.

In 2020, the Mail on Sunday launched a campaign calling for the streamer to clarify to its millions of viewers that the series’ storylines present “fiction as fact”.