STACK #229 November 2023

TV FEATURE

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When Australia’s Elizabeth Debicki debuted her Princess Diana on the set of The Crown , her co-stars were absolutely gobsmacked by her sheer resemblance to the late princess. Words Gill Pringle A CROWNING MOMENT

”S he’s really got it down - while I was terrified,” recalls Dominic West, who portrays Prince Charles in Season 5. ”I remember that first camera test we did was the worst day of my life. She came in looking just like Princess Di, and sounding just like Princess Di - and I walked in dressed up

Dominic West and Elizabeth Debicki as Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

’Oh, he’s been slightly miscast, hasn’t he? They got Diana right, but I’m not sure about him’,” he laughs. ”What The Crown has always done so cleverly is not try to imitate the characters, but to evoke them, and that’s how I’m hoping to get

characters or people,” says the actress, who made her film debut in Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby , going on to feature in Guardians of the Galaxy, Tenet, Everest, and Widows . ”I’m grateful that I had a very blank canvas. I just came at it from a really open place. I’m Australian; I know we’re part of the Commonwealth, but I don’t have an inbuilt, genetic understanding of these people, or even the importance of this family.” Ask Debicki if she felt daunted in portraying one of the most famous women in the world, and she admits: ”It’s a whole emotional, psychological journey from the beginning to end in terms of even allowing yourself to think that you can play it.”

as Charles. I don’t look anything like him, and I don’t really sound anything like him either! ”And I also don’t move like him. I’ve got little legs like him, but other than that, that’s it. So I was standing there waiting for my test, watching the screen where Elizabeth was walking down a corridor, and I went, ’Oh my God, it’s amazing, it’s uncanny’. And I just thought I could hear the crew going,

away with it. Elizabeth looks like Diana, though. Not in real life, but my God she does when she’s in the makeup and hair,” he says in awe. Unlike perhaps everyone else on this planet, Debicki came into The Crown knowing very little about Princess Diana. ”I didn’t have

• The Crown: The Complete Fifth Season is out Nov 29

a particularly profound knowledge or understanding of any of these

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