Revenge dress: Debicki evokes Princess Di's tabloid trouble

The Australian actor admits reading about the Royal Family online makes her "nauseous".

Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana

The Australian actor admits reading about the Royal Family online makes her "nauseous".

Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki, who will portray Princess Diana in the forthcoming season of The Crown, reveals she doesn’t consume any news coverage related to the Royal family because it makes her “nauseous.”

The penultimate season of The Crown is proving to be quite the provocative release. The death of Queen Elizabeth II in September has brought about an enhanced sensitivity toward the series. 

The likes of Dame Judi Dench and former UK Prime Minister John Major criticised the show for blurring the lines of history and fiction. Dench condemned the show as “cruelly unjust” to the royal family and “damaging to the institution they represent.” 

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Debicki doesn’t seem phased by the premature backlash. In a new profile with British Vogue, the actress mused that she has no skin in the game. “I don’t have any big opinions about the Royal Family. That’s an advantage here, right?,” she said. “The Daily Mail makes me nauseous.”

Diana, Princess Of Wales played by Elizabeth Debicki Picture: Netflix

“Anyone who works on the show has a sense of how extremely difficult it is to be born into that [life],” Debicki adds. “The rules are sort of decided for you as well: less is more.”

The late Princess Diana broke that rule.

“She broke the fourth wall, reaped the benefits, but the consequences came hard and heavy,” says Debicki. 

Debicki says that taking on the role of Princess Diana has been a “huge gift.”

“It’s a story of immense transformation – and triumph too. The public got to watch her evolve into an incredibly strong woman, trying to control a narrative that was the slipperiest thing ever.”

Tabloids may not phase Debicki, but she admits “the revenge dress was pressure.” 

One of the most anticipated episodes in the forthcoming season of The Crown is the recreation of the revenge dress. The iconic black, off-shoulder, Christina Stambolian designed dress that Princess Diana stepped out in at a Vanity Fair party at the Serpentine Gallery, after the notorious interview on ITV where her estranged husband, Prince Charles, admitted he had been unfaithful.

"She was claiming the space," Princess Diana in her iconic revenge dress.

“It was pressure. It’s a complex dress. I let the fittings happen around me while I thought about what the dress meant. Why this dress? She’d had it for two or three years. It was super risqué at the time.” Debicki reflects. 

Adding, “She was claiming the space. The way she walked out of that car, the luminosity, the strength of her as that car door opened, she was so fast and so forward. It’s an extraordinary thing to watch. 

“To decide what you’re saying about yourself through fashion… it was a currency. An incredibly powerful currency.”

Ultimately, the actor, who got her breakthrough playing Jordan Baker in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, hopes she’s “done something interesting” for Princess Diana. “That’s the ultimate goal.”

Season 5 of The Crown will premiere on Netflix on November 9.