Doing her research! For Emma Corrin, taking on the role of Princess Diana on The Crown came with its own set of challenges, especially since she didn’t remember anything about the late royal beforehand.
“I had no memory of her, so I think that helped me,” Corrin, 25, shared with W Magazine on Tuesday, August 24. “It was a blank slate.”
The Crown introduced Corrin as the Princess of Wales during season 4 in 2020. At the time, the My Policeman star really wanted to make sure that she showcased all the layers of Diana’s life.
“There became a clear connection from Diana’s unstable childhood to her looking for something welcoming,” she detailed.
It was important for Corrin that the narrative noted the difference between Diana before she joined the royal family and after she married Prince Charles.
“We knew she was a very warm person who gravitated towards people. She was looking to be embraced in something very warm and very familiar, and she didn’t find that at all; she found the exact opposite with the royal family,” the actress explained on Tuesday.
The Golden Globe winner, who was only 2 years old when Diana died in a car crash in 1997, knew when she joined the Netflix series that she wanted to do right by the activist. In turn, she pushed for Diana’s bulimia to be explored in season 4.
“Of course we wanted it to be sensitive and thoughtful,” Corrin revealed. “It’s about the battle for control over your food, in relation to what you’re feeling. For Diana, it was a way of physically getting out everything that she had bottled up.”
Josh O’Connor, who portrayed Prince Charles, joined Corrin during the interview to explain how they tackled Diana and Charles’ complicated marriage on screen.
“We both spent a long time during prep researching the nuances of failed marriages,” O’Connor, 31, added. “Our care for our own characters and each other’s meant that whatever the scene was, we were completely focused on telling a truthful and real account of those moments.”
While Corrin didn’t have any recollection of Diana before joining The Crown, she was no stranger to the late royal’s children and their major milestones. Earlier this year, the Pennyworth alum admitted that she attended Prince William and Duchess Kate‘s wedding ceremony in April 2011.
“I remember 10 years ago, I was 15, I was with my friend Katherine and we got very, very swept up in the royal wedding fever, I think probably because we were both very bored and very single. So we decided to go,” she recalled during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! In June.
While Corrin wasn’t a “massive royal family person,” she was still thrilled to be present for such a meaningful event.
“My friend Katherine had this great inflatable daffodil,” she noted. “When we were watching the footage back to see if we could get a glimpse of ourselves, we couldn’t see ourselves but we did see — in the middle of these crowds — this massive inflatable daffodil that she was holding up.”
