What Elizabeth Debicki Has Said About Playing Princess Diana in 'The Crown'

The highly-anticipated Season 5 of The Crown is streaming on Netflix now, with a whole new cast portraying the British royal family.

Season 5 is set in the 1990s and sees the royal family facing several martial breakdowns as well as a decline in popularity with the British public and Princess Diana's infamous Martin Bashir interview.

One of the biggest storylines of the new series is the separation and subsequent divorce of Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales, portrayed by Dominic West and Elizabeth Debicki respectively.

West and Debicki take over the roles from Josh O'Connor and Emma Corrin and just like Corrin's portrayal of Diana in Season 4, audiences are in awe of Debicki's resemblance and embodiment of the late princess.

Newsweek has everything you need to know about Debicki and what she has said about taking on the role of Princess Diana.

What Elizabeth Debicki Has Said About Playing Princess Diana in The Crown

Australian actress Debicki portrays Princess Diana in The Crown Season 5 and will reprise the role in Season 6, the final season of the multi-award-winning series.

The announcement of her casting was made in 2020. Debicki, who has starred in The Great Gatsby, Tenet, and The Night Manager, said in a statement at the time: "Princess Diana's spirit, her words, and her actions live in the hearts of so many. It is my true privilege and honor to be joining this masterful series, which has had me absolutely hooked from episode one."

Now that The Crown's new season is out for the world to see, Debicki has been sharing insight into what it was really like to take on the role.

The Recordings

Early in The Crown Season 5 one of the events that play out in Diana's life is her making recordings for British journalist and biographer Andrew Morton about her life.

The recordings were made in secret and delivered to Morton by her close friend, Dr. James Colthurst. In 1992, Morton published Diana: Her True Story, and both parties denied Diana had any involvement.

However, following Diana's death in August 1997, Morton published Diana: Her True Story - In Her Own Words which included the transcripts of the audio recordings she had sent to him.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Debicki said filming the recording scenes was a "fascinating and complex task."

"It's extremely unusual that you would just suddenly have this portal opened up where you can access that kind of reality, and that emotional truth, of your character, and then find ways to reinterpret it as an actor," she said.

"I found it to be a really rich experience and a real challenge as well."

The Revenge Dress

In Episode 5 of The Crown Season 5, Debicki portrays the famous moment Diana attended a dinner at the Serpentine Gallery in 1994, on the same evening Prince Charles acknowledged in an interview he had been unfaithful to Diana.

For the occasion, Diana wore a black, off-the-shoulder Christina Stambolian dress, which later became known as the "revenge dress."

Debicki told Vogue wearing a replica of the revenge dress was "pressure."

"It's a complex dress," she said. "I let the fittings happen around me while I thought about what the dress meant. Why this dress? She'd had it for two or three years. It was super risqué at the time. She was claiming the space. The way she walked out of that car, the luminosity, the strength of her as that car door opened, she was so fast and so forward. It's an extraordinary thing to watch. To decide what you're saying about yourself through fashion... it was a currency. An incredibly powerful currency."

In the same interview, reflecting on playing Diana, Debicki shared: "I hope I've done something interesting for her. That's the ultimate goal."

The First Day on Set

In October 2022 with The Radio Times, Debicki described her first day on set as Diana as a "slow fall."

"There's the actual hurdle of getting on the set on the first day — I remember this strange, very slow fall," she said. "It's like, 'It's happening. It's really happening. The cameras are rolling, and I'm really doing this thing.

"People making this show have done this for many years, so there was a real support network around us to say, 'This is totally normal. Everybody felt like this when they started. It takes time, and then you will find your feet.' And we all did."

The Crown Season 5 is streaming on Netflix now.