Portraying a princess too often beyond mere Hollywood mortals

I’m trying not to sound needlessly pessimistic, but perhaps Naomi Watts should have picked up the phone to her fellow Aussie actor Elizabeth Debicki and offered a little friendly, big-sisterly advice about playing Princess Diana: Don’t do it!

Looking the part is one thing. Naomi Watts in her ill-fated film Diana.

As the star of box office bomb Diana, Watts knows only too well about the curse of playing the Princess, a role which has brought plenty of attention (and not much of it good) for a long line of actresses over the years.

Since her death, Diana - or at least her public image - has almost been beatified by the masses. As is often the case with deities, the art of portraying Diana has proven beyond the ability of mere mortals, even of the Hollywood variety.

Every aspect of the Princess’ life has been documented and scrutinised over and over again. The task of an actor convincing an audience that she is Diana rather than a poor facsimile has become a near impossibility.

Last week images of Debicki in character as Diana in the upcoming season of Netflix’s hugely successful series The Crown were generating buzz, and provided a panacea from the unrelenting bad news cycle.

Princess Diana is being played by Elizabeth Debicki in the new season of The Crown.Credit: AP

There is no denying Debicki bears a striking resemblance to the late Princess.

But as Watts discovered back in 2013, looking the part is one thing, convincing audiences you are Princess Diana is quite another.

Among Watts’ many challenges was something as simple as her height: a petite 164cm and quite a bit shorter than Diana, who stood at 178cm, almost the same height as her husband, Prince Charles.

By comparison Debicki is a Gandalfesque 191cm, and given the Queen will be played by Imelda Staunton, who comes in at a pint-sized 152cm, we can only hope Debicki is wearing flats for any scenes they may share.

Elizabeth Debicki in character as Princess Diana for The Crown.Credit: Netflix

But of course it wasn’t just about Watts’ height. A year after Diana premiered, Watts revealed her regrets about the role.

She told Harper’s Bazaar magazine: “I got seduced by the fantastic character. Diana did a lot of things that had positive and negative results. She was multifaceted.

“But ultimately, there were problems [with the film] and it ended up taking a direction that was not the one I was hoping for.”

By my reckoning Debicki will be the twelfth actor to take on Diana in a major television or film production.

Ever since Charles and Diana married in 1981 their relationship has provided a rich seam of showbiz inspiration.

Diana and Charles' marriage was billed as a fairytale until it went awry.Credit: AP

They had barely marked their first wedding anniversary when America’s ABC released Charles & Diana: A Royal Love Story in 1982 with British actor Caroline Bliss taking on the Diana role. Judging by the reviews it was a pretty forgettable performance, but it did propel Bliss into the Bond franchise during the late 1980s, becoming Moneypenny in The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill.

Rival American network CBS released its own telemovie The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana around the same time starring Catherine Oxenberg as Princess Diana, which seemed to make a little more sense given Oxenberg was the daughter of Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia.

The Diana role proved to be a fruitful one for Oxenberg. She got to play Diana again in 1992 in another cheesy telemovie called Charles and Diana: Unhappily Ever After.

Nicola Formby played Princess Diana in The Women of Windsor in 1992, which was almost comedic in its retelling of the story of Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York.

At the time Variety called it “unabsorbing”.

In 1993 NBC had a crack with Serena Scott Thomas in Diana: Her True Story. Scott Thomas is the younger and slightly lesser known sister of actor Kristen Scott Thomas.

Ironically Serena returned to the Windsor orbit in 2008, this time playing Carole Middleton, mother of Kate, in William & Kate: The Movie.

Julie Cox was cast as Diana in the 1996 CBS movie Princess in Love, which told the story of Diana’s alleged affair with her former riding instructor.

In 1998, a year after Princess Diana died, Amy Seccombe appeared in Diana: A Tribute to The People’s Princess.

A decade later, Genevieve O’Reilly appeared in Diana: Last Days of a Princess.

Then came Watts’ turn, who even suggested some kind of spiritual connection with Diana: “There were definitely moments when I felt Diana’s presence ... I kept wondering to myself: ‘Would she have liked it?’”

Clearly it must have been a dodgy connection with the afterlife.

Bonnie Soper played Princess Diana - in flashback scenes - in two cheesy telemovies: 2018’s Harry & Meghan: A Royal Romance and 2019’s Harry & Meghan: Becoming Royal.

Most recently it has been Emma Corrin’s turn in Netflix’s most recent series of The Crown; her portrayal of a young Diana garnered a Golden Globe this year.

No doubt Debicki is hoping for similar success, but before she gets her chance one-time cult teen movie star Kristen Stewart will play Princess Diana in an upcoming movie titled Spencer, due to be released in November.

Perhaps Debicki and Watts, along with Corrin, Oxenberg and all the others, could make it a girls’ movie night and go see it together?

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