Elizabeth Debicki reveals struggle to shake off Princess Diana role
Elizabeth Debicki has found it “slow” shaking off her role as Princess Diana in ‘The Crown’.
The ‘Widows’ actress, 33, played the tragic royal – killed in a Paris car crash aged 36 in 1997 – in the final series of the popular Netflix drama, and has now said moving away from the role was “bittersweet” as it left her with both fond memories and the fallout from “terrifying” pressure to get her portrayal of the princess right.
She told Variety: “It’s been a slow moving away from it. I’ve taken my treasures from it.
“It’s twofold. On a personal level, I’ve learned a lot from playing that character and as an actor it was a hugely terrifying challenge.”
Elizabeth last year told how playing Diana in her last days was an emotional “challenge”.
She starred as the princess in the sixth and final series of ‘The Crown’, which charted the doomed relationship between Diana and her rumoured lover Dodi Fayed, played by Khalid Abdalla, 43.
She was quoted by the Daily Mirror telling how she stuck closely to writer Peter Morgan’s “emotional blueprint” for Diana in the role.
She said: “I think it’s a unique challenge as an actor, to portray those days.
“It’s his interpretation and it made emotional sense to me, so I clung to that.”
‘The Crown’ showed Diana and Dodi on holiday with the princess’ sons William and Harry on their famous super yacht holiday in Saint-Tropez in July 1997.
Weeks later Di and Dodi, 42, along with their driver Henri Paul, 41, were killed during a car chase in Paris tunnel.
Imelda Staunton, 68, made her comeback to ‘The Crown’ for its final series to play the Queen, who died aged 96 in September 2022.
