Charles, then the Prince of Wales, with Queen Elizabeth II at the Derby Races in 1993.Getty Images

“The Crown” is returning to Netflix with a fifth season on November 9.
According to The Sunday Times, it contains a scene where Charles suggests replacing the Queen.
Netflix has previously called the show “fiction that’s broadly based on historical events.”

The fifth season of “The Crown” includes a scene where Charles suggests he’s prepared to replace Queen Elizabeth II while she was still alive, The Sunday Times reported.

Season five of “The Crown” hits Netflix on November 9 and will focus on plotlines involving the royal family in the 1990s.

Events viewers can expect to see dramatized include Princess Diana’s tell-all interview with the BBC and the Queen’s infamous “annus horribilis” – a phrase she used to describe the turbulence the royals faced in 1992 with the collapse of several marriages and the Windsor Castle fire.

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It is also set to frame Charles, played by Dominic West, as a king-in-waiting ready to become the monarch if the Queen abdicated. Charles was first in line to inherit the throne throughout the Queen’s 70-year reign, which ended when she died aged 96 in September.

According to The Sunday Times, the upcoming season of “The Crown” includes an episode where Charles holds a secret meeting with then-prime minister John Major pitching himself as a replacement for the Queen. The newspaper reports that, in the scene, Charles asks Major whether he believes the monarch is “in safe hands.”

Charles on a visit to France in March 1992.Marc Deville/Getty Images
Whether such a conversation ever took place is unclear. Buckingham Palace has long denied claims that the Queen planned to step down while she was alive, Insider previously reported.

Buckingham Palace did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment on Sunday.

A spokesperson for Major hit back at “The Crown” and told The Telegraph he had not “cooperated” with the showrunners in any way.

The spokesperson said the plotlines should be “seen as nothing other than damaging and malicious fiction” and “a barrel-load of nonsense peddled for no other reason than to provide maximum – and entirely false – dramatic impact.”

Charles greeting then-Prime Minister John Major and his wife in May 1995.Getty Images
“There was never any discussion between Sir John and the then Prince of Wales about any possible abdication of the late Queen Elizabeth II,” the spokesperson added. “Nor was such an improbable and improper subject ever raised by the then Prince of Wales (or Sir John).”

Showrunners for the Netflix drama have long maintained that it should not be viewed as historical fact.

Amid calls for the show to include a disclaimer in 2020, Netflix said it had “always presented ‘The Crown’ as a drama — and we have every confidence our members understand it’s a work of fiction that’s broadly based on historical events,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

Representatives for producers of “The Crown” did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

Read the original article on Insider