Season 5 of Netflix’s historical drama “The Crown” features Peter Morgan’s re-imaginings of some of the royal family’s most polarizing experiences in the 1990s. Elizabeth Debicki, who plays the beloved Princess Diana, narrates Variety‘s Awards Circuit Podcast that she felt the “heaviness” and “weight” of playing the late icon.
“It’s a unique experience to play a character where this tragedy is lurking,” says Debicki. “It’s a strange, tough place to live in.” In this episode of the podcast, ‘The Crown’ star Elizabeth Debicki talks to Adam B. Vary about playing a tragic real-life figure as Princess Diana, including the research that went into the role, and how she captured the former’s voice . The Princess of Wales. But first, on the Awards Circuit Roundtable, we watch the race as the Emmy Stage 1 voting begins. Which shows benefited from the FYC campaigns? And so much more. Listen below:
The season highlights the inevitable demise of the marriage of Princess Diana and Prince Charles (now King Charles), marked by a slew of alleged affairs and that infamous revenge dress heard around the world.
Working with the head of the research department on the series, Debicki received a “massive amount of printed materials and books” to prepare to play Princess Diana ahead of season 5. “Reading the archival documents will give you an idea of what season 5 is going to cover,” Debicki explained.
Debicki reveals she went on a “psychological journey” to capture the essence of Diana that Morgan wanted to evoke, as opposed to an exact replication of the former Princess of Wales.
“This was different, when I started to understand that it’s Peter’s interpretation and he’s making the character’s journey,” Debicki explains. “When the script landed in my lap, I felt a huge amount of relief, because it had already been sculpted — all that mass information, he’d cut through that and created this path.”
Capturing Diana’s voice was something Debicki was “really fixated and obsessive about” on the series. Debicki worked with a dialect coach to perfect Diana’s “iconic” voice, an element of the character she felt was important to recreate for audiences.
“I felt like it was something I owed to the audience, that sonic accuracy,” says Debicki. “The character’s voice is so imprinted in our collective consciousness. There are a lot of iconic voices, and she had one and so I thought, ‘Well, I have to do this justice.’”
The pressure of playing a fictionalized version of the folk princess was something Debicki felt and hadn’t realized how hard it was to embark on the project. “I never really understood what was lost because I didn’t experience the impact she had on the audience,” says Debicki. “She taught me a lot; I think she lived her life with a tremendous amount of courage and with a strong love ethic. She really loved her very much and she needed love in a way I don’t know she ever really found.”
Morgan’s depiction of Diana is one that Debicki highlights as a very “organic” and “authentic” side of the deceased princess. “His Diana always seems to be a human trying to work her way into something in a system that allowed for authentic expression of who you are as an individual,” says Debicki.
He always seems to write to her as someone who understood the duty that came with it once she settled into the family. I think the directness in Peter’s writing is constantly at odds with the manner of the rest of the family.”