Elizabeth Debicki, who portrays Princess Diana in Seasons 5 and 6 of Netflix’s The Crown, was a nine-year lady in Australia when Diana died tragically in 1997 in a Paris automobile crash. She carried that childhood reminiscence together with her as she recreated the Princess’ closing days on the Netflix drama.
“I remember my mother’s reaction very, very strongly; I remember sitting on the floor of our living room and my mother was watching the funeral procession and she was weeping,” Debicki informed Deadline on the crimson carpet for the Season 6 premiere of The Crown. “I didn’t understand what was going on, and she explained to me who this person was. It’s actually quite a strong core memory in a way, so I learnt a lot and I did a lot of research when I was approaching this role, but I suppose knowing that this woman influenced my mother, a woman in Australia in the suburbs, so deeply is something that was already embedded into my understanding of the story.”
The first 4 episodes of Season 6 chronicle the occasions resulting in Diana’s loss of life and its speedy aftermath, which incorporates visions of the late Princess that interact in conversations with the Queen and Prince Charles.
These scenes have gotten a number of consideration, getting referenced as that includes Diana’s “ghost.”
The Crown creator Peter Morgan has a difficulty with that.
“The word ghosts is unhelpful, I was never writing anything from a supernatural perspective, not at all,” he informed Deadline. “It was more an indication that, when someone has just passed, they’re still vivid in the minds of all those close to them and love them. And sometimes it’s impossible to keep them out of the minds. It felt to me more like an extension of her in real life, rather than a ghost.”
Debicki agrees.
“I’ve always been very intrigued by Peter’s brain, and I think that it’s an interesting, beautiful way to have a conversation about the experience of grief,” she mentioned of the scenes with Diana after her loss of life. “I think that that is how we approached it as well. It’s such a slippery, human, crashing, impossible thing to reckon with, the loss of somebody, and I think that his way of imagining that was very beautiful to me, and it made sense.”