The Crown: Truth behind ‘sacred’ Princess Diana scene

The Aussie actress who plays Diana in The Crown has revealed the truth behind an iconic scene in the cult series.

Elizabeth Debicki in The Crown. Picture: Netflix.

Light has been shed on the behind-the-scenes of an iconic moment in The Crown, as Netflix reveals how it plans to depict Princess Diana’s death.

The cult show returns on November 16 to chronicle the royal family to 2005, when Prince Charles married Camilla. It will include four episodes set in 1997 during the months before Princess Diana’s death.

Australian actor Elizabeth Debicki shared what she believes is the defining moment of the highly anticipated new episodes — the moments that Diana was photographed by paparazzi while holidaying with billionaire Dodi Fayed and her two sons in Italy.

The photos, taken just weeks before the princess’s untimely death, showed Diana wearing a blue swimsuit as she sat on a diving board in Portofino. They became some of the most iconic images of all time, believed to showcase Diana’s isolation after her divorce.

Elizabeth Debicki as Diana in The Crown. Picture: Netflix.

Debicki, who portrays Diana in The Crown, recounted the painstaking efforts by the team to recreate the shots.

She likened the images to those of the “revenge dress” — a black, off the shoulder gown worn by Princess Diana in 1994 on the day that Prince Charles admitted his affair with now-wife Camilla on national television.

Debicki said: “There was just something about that swimsuit and recreating that moment that felt very sacred.

“It was very important we got it right. In a way, it reminded me a little bit of when we shot the revenge dress. It’s as close as possible to the real imagery.

“As an actress, I get to enter into that space and discover what’s emotionally in that moment.

“With the revenge dress, I didn’t really know until I stepped out of the car.

“At this moment, I didn’t really know until I was sat with the sea under me.”

Debicki as Diana in the iconic "revenge dress". Picture: Netflix.

Netflix has confirmed it will not show the fatal crash that killed Princess Diana. Instead, Debicki and Khalid Abdalla, who plays Fayed, recreated other scenes in which they were chased by paparazzi.

“There’s nowhere you can go and you only have to be in a situation like that for about a minute before you realise, ‘This is completely unbearable’,” Debicki said of the mock pursuits.

“To have this swarm around you, you feel very trapped. It’s a really unpleasant experience.

“There are times as an actor — where you’re actually doing a stunt, or you’re jumping off a building, or you jump into the water, or whatever it is — that you experience something very physical and there’s not a huge amount of acting that takes place.

“I think that was what was happening a lot when we were recreating those scenes, because it’s really horrendous to have that many people yelling at you and wanting something.”

Khalid added: “I experienced, for the first time in my life, of being in a car as it’s moving and having paparazzi come next to the window and … bang.

“Of course, we’re doing these scenes again and again, which simulates in many ways what their experience was, again and again.

“When we finished shooting on one of those days, I went home.

“As I was going home out of costume in the car, any time a scooter would go past me, I would flinch.”

“Dodi was never really known, and so he was never really mourned,” Khalid added of his character.

“Their relationship, from beginning to end, was six weeks.

“That’s one of the things that very often shocks people.

“We were kind of exploring it in real time.”

Originally published as The Crown: Truth behind ‘sacred’ Princess Diana scene