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The Crown’s Elizabeth Debicki on playing Princess Diana in her final days in season 6: ‘There is a profound sense of tragedy when you play that part’

  • The Crown’s final season covers Princess Diana’s last days and her death. Elizabeth Debicki, who portrays her, reveals what if felt like acting out those events
  • ‘We left all the pieces of ourselves up there on the screen, because it deserves nothing less than that,’ Debicki says of the cast in the Netflix series

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(From left) The cast of The Crown attend the show’s season five premiere in 2022. Princess Diana’s death is explored in the final season of the Netflix series. Photo: Reuters

For Elizabeth Debicki, portraying Princess Diana on The Crown for two seasons created a sense of responsibility to be as authentic as possible for the many people who revere the British royal family.

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“There is a profound sense of tragedy that lives in your body when you play that part of the story,” Debicki says. “But having watched it, which I recently did, and while the credits are rolling, I thought this was a really serious thing that we put on the screen.”

The two-part sixth, and final, season of The Crown explores Princess Diana’s final days before she perishes in a car accident. It premiered on Netflix on November 16.

As a historical drama, the Emmy-winning drama series created by Peter Morgan seeks to tell the story of Queen Elizabeth’s reign against the backdrop of various royal dramas.
Princess Diana meets children during her visit to a Hindu temple in London in May 1997, three months before she died. Photo: EPA
Princess Diana meets children during her visit to a Hindu temple in London in May 1997, three months before she died. Photo: EPA

Debicki believes it is a common experience for The Crown actors to struggle to “let go” and stop “observing” themselves while filming the show.

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