Royal biographer Gyles Brandreth claimed the late Prince Philip refused to watch the 2006 film The Queen due to Helen Mirren’s “inaccurate portrayal” of his wife.

The historical drama was directed by Stephen Frears and written by Peter Morgan, who went on to write the series The Crown. With Mirren in the titular role of Elizabeth II, the film follows the in the immediate aftermath of in 1997 and uses real archive footage to reconstruct the events leading up to the crash. Mirren won the for Best Actress for her portrayal of the queen.

September 8 is the second anniversary of the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Marking that day, Brandreth spoke to Terry Pendry, who worked with the queen for over 28 years as her stud groom and manager at Windsor Castle, during an episode of his podcast, Rosebud with Gyles Brandreth.

During the episode, titled “Terry Pendry: Queen Elizabeth II’s groom at Windsor Castle,” Brandreth claimed he had a tense conversation with Philip about the movie, which he refused to watch.

Regalrumination.com emailed Buckingham Palace and spokespeople for Mirren, Brandreth and Morgan for comment on Friday.

“The Duke of Edinburgh, I remember saying to me, when I asked him if he’d seen the film of The Queen with Helen Mirren, he said: ‘Why would I want to see that?’ And he got irritated,” Brandreth said.

“He said, ‘Apparently they have the queen crying in the film.’ He said, ‘The queen doesn’t cry.'”

“He wasn’t saying it was a virtue not to cry or, he said ‘An actress would cry, would assume the queen would cry, but she didn’t cry.'”

Brandreth also said the queen was a “self-contained” person, to which Pendry agreed.

“She was always quite self-contained, wasn’t she? I remember hearing from people who were with her when she became queen—when the late King George VI died and she came back from Kenya—how calm and contained she was and how she didn’t shed tears,” the royal biographer said.

Pendry later added: “There was, without a shadow of a doubt, I don’t know if it’s a godly thing or not, but there is an inner power. You mentioned earlier her religion and that played a powerful part in her life.”

Buckingham Palace confirmed the news of Queen Elizabeth II’s death on September 8, 2022, saying in a statement that she “died peacefully .” This came just 17 months after .

Throughout her historic reign, many movies and series have been made documenting the queen’s life, including the controversial Netflix series The Crown.

The six-season show, which aired its final episodes in 2023, chronicled the life and reign of and her family, earning both praise and criticism from audiences and reviewers for its imagined portrayal of real events and people.

Several royals have, however, one who remains .

“The Prince…rolls his eyes when people say that ‘it’s just drama,’ says a source close to him,” royal biographer Robert Hardman wrote in .

“‘Yet, he will not give it any greater publicity by complaining. He doesn’t like the idea of being seen as a complainer all the time.'”

Prince William’s brother, , previously said the show is fictional, but “it’s loosely based on the truth.”

“Of course it’s not strictly accurate, of course it’s not, but loosely it gives you a rough idea about what that lifestyle, what the pressures of putting duty and service above family and everything else, what can come from that,” he explained during a 2021 appearance on .

“I’m way more comfortable with The Crown than I am seeing the stories written about my family or my wife or myself because…that is obviously fiction, take it how you will, but this is being reported on as fact because you are supposedly news. I have a real issue with that.”