In about a week, Netflix will finally release The Crown Season 6 Part 1. As this will serve as the final season of the controversial fictional drama about the royal family, it will cover the most important events in the royals' lives between 1997 and 2005, including Princess Diana’s death. As the news about her demise came as a huge surprise to many back then, Elizabeth Debicki, who portrays the People’s Princess, reveals that the events that led up to her character’s death are “completely unbearable.”
Debicki might have only stepped into the Princess of Wales’ shoes for a little while, but she already found being followed by a lot of paparazzi horrendous. In The Crown Season 6 Part 1, she had to go through the tumultuous events where the press was tailing Princess Diana in Paris after her relationship with Dodi Fayed began.
“It was difficult,” she told Tudum about that moment. “It was heavy and very manic and incredibly invasive. You only have to be in a situation like that for about a minute before you realize this is completely unbearable. [But] we let it happen because it feels like a very important part of the story to tell.”
Filming those scenes, Debicki added that she felt like she wasn’t acting anymore. With the number of people yelling at her and wanting something from her, the terrible feeling came naturally.
Will The Crown Season 6 feature Princess Diana’s death?
Netflix has already cleared that Princess Diana’s death wouldn’t be seen on-screen on The Crown Season 6. Instead, it would feature the events before the tragic car crash and the heavy attention the press gave her and her partner, Dodi.
Director Christian Schwochow told Deadline they ensured these sensitive scenes were tactfully handled. The filmmaker directs Episodes 2 to 4, titled Two Photographs, Dis-Moi-Oui, which features the car crash, and Aftermath, respectively. Though they had scenes of Princess Diana, they did it with much respect and never featured a big close-up.
“It was very, very clear to us that we don’t want to see her dead body,” he said. Schwochow continued that they filmed this scene not long after Queen Elizabeth II’s demise, which made it harder as they all felt the “conscious memory of people.” Despite the hardships of re-creating those scenes, he hoped he had created their truth, as truthful as what viewers could get in fiction.
The Crown Season 6 Part 1 will be released on Netflix on November 16, followed by Part 2 on December 14. Surely, the series will be once again the talk of the town when the final season finally premieres.
