Emma Corrin
was three when Lady Diana died in 1997. She watched her funeral on TV.
Now she plays her in the fourth season of
The Crown
, set between 1979 and the early 1990s), the Netflix television series about British royalty created by Peter Morgan.
Let's say immediately that this young actress with little experience (The Grantchester (2014) and Pennyworth (2018) her precedents) is perfectly placed in the part that could also scare given the immense popularity of Lady D.
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For the 25-year-old actress from Kent, passionate about theater, there was the risk of making a caricature or a copy of Diana Spencer thanks to a vague resemblance to the original but it is with a naturalistic acting that has struck critics a to hit the mark, interpreting the unhappy wife of the heir to the throne Charles, as a shy, childish young woman, with an always melancholy gaze.
Before Emma Corrin 15 actresses have lent their faces to the most iconic of all, from Julie Cox to Naomi Watts.
In the fifth and sixth season she will give way to Elizabeth Debicki, who will play
Lady D
in the final two seasons of the series.
The actress plays the princess aged 16, when "England's Rose", as Elton John called her in "Candle in the Wind", lived in a shared flat in Earl's Court, met Prince Charles (Josh O ' Connor) and falls in love, then the fairytale wedding - in the episode she wears a reproduction identical to the dress worn by Diana in 1981 - "the crowded union" as she herself defined in an interview her marriage with the presence of Camilla Parker Bowles (Emerald Fennel), the two children, the difficult relationship with the royal family, with Queen Elizabeth II (Oscar winner Olivia Colman), her gilded prison (in the episode she turns the palace on skates wriggling listening to the Duran Duran ), his eating disorders.
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"I have always seen Diana as an icon but to interpret her
I focused on her humanity and her mystery
" explains Emma Corrin.
For the actress, Diana "was not entirely unaware of what awaited her at Court but nothing can prepare you to live in that reality".
When he moves into the building "it is as if he felt he was losing part of his identity".
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He studied a lot to recreate it: «It may seem absurd, seeing the series, that Diana chose someone like Carlo, even if he was the heir to the throne.
Maybe we forget that Diana was young, she was my age, ”she explained to GQ.
He hoped for it as he hopes when we're twenty.
"You think that love is everything, you try to dance, to dress and delight people to make a good impression on who you like"