{"id":25835,"date":"2022-11-15T11:55:19","date_gmt":"2022-11-15T10:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/?p=1737646"},"modified":"2022-11-15T12:37:23","modified_gmt":"2022-11-15T11:37:23","slug":"the-crown-star-explains-why-he-doesnt-question-martin-bashirs-deceit","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/rss_feed\/the-crown-star-explains-why-he-doesnt-question-martin-bashirs-deceit\/","title":{"rendered":"The Crown star explains why he doesn\u2019t question Martin Bashir\u2019s \u201cdeceit\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Lidia Molina-Whyte\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Tuesday, 15 November 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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The fifth season of The Crown<\/a> landed on Netflix<\/a> last week, tackling the breakdown of Charles and Diana<\/a>\u2018s marriage and the aftermath of their divorce.<\/p>\n

Such aftermath included Diana\u2019s explosive Panorama interview<\/a> with Martin Bashir<\/a>, in which she spoke candidly about her relationship with the then Prince of Wales, and declared \u201cthere were three\u201d people in their marriage.<\/p>\n

It later emerged that Bashir had used fake documents to help secure the controversial interview, but actor Prasanna Puwanarajah didn\u2019t \u201cquestion\u201d the real Bashir\u2019s motives\u201d when playing him in the Netflix drama.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s clear from all of these investigations that he was working in terms of this interview in a way that constituted journalistic deceit,\u201d Puwanarajah told RadioTimes.com<\/a> in an exclusive interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the word that\u2019s used. I think the thing about it is that as an actor, it\u2019s important to not make inroads into a question around a place on a moral spectrum. And the reason is, it compromises you as a performer if what you\u2019re playing is a predetermined space around that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Martin Bashir interviews Princess Diana in Kensington Palace.<\/span><\/figcaption> Pool Photograph\/Corbis\/Corbis via Getty Images<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n

Puwanarajah added: \u201cAll you can ever really do is try and work out what a person is doing in a scene, and you do that in the context of behaviour that you understand to be in play from previous scenes or from research, which probably sounds a bit science-y, and I am a scientist by trade, so that\u2019s probably why.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut for me it\u2019s very important, and has always been important to me as an actor, to keep a clear sight of simple objectives in scene by scene order, rather than trying to work out objective things about a person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite not straying too deep into the morality of how Bashir obtained the interview, Puwanarajah, who also played the journalist in Naomi Watt\u2019s 2013 film Diana,\u00a0did say it would have been \u201cinteresting to know his thought processes around that time\u201d.<\/p>\n

He explained: \u201cThe question that you want answered as an actor is why is this person doing things? What are their aims? And those aims might be quite local to that person. I think I would approach it in quite a forensic way. I would just be interested to know what was the thought process from here to here. How did that work?\u201d<\/p>

In 2021, an inquiry by Lord Dyson found that Bashir had breached BBC rules by mocking up fake bank statements to obtain an interview with Princess Diana.<\/p>\n

As a result of the inquiry, BBC\u2019s director-general Tim Davie ruled in 2022 that the interview would never be broadcast by the corporation again.<\/a><\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Abby Robinson.<\/em><\/p>\n

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