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Emma Corrin is on the cusp of genuine global stardom—as the world waits with bated breath to see her performance as Princess Diana in the fourth season of The Crown. Though the series won’t air for another fortnight (November 15th, mark your calendars), 24-year-old Corrin has already offered a tiny glimpse of what her rendition of Diana will sound like.
Speaking to Variety alongside her co-star Josh O’Connor (who plays Prince Charles), Corrin revealed she had a word had that helped her slip into character. “Mine was ‘all right,'” she said. “I just love her voice so much. I really miss it.” Corrin also revealed that the key to perfecting Lady Di’s iconic lilting tone was a simple act of tweaked enunciation. “She goes down at the end of everything she says, which makes everything she says sound quite sad.”
Corrin also revealed the unlikely path that led her to being cast as Diana. She had, in fact, been doing reads for the character of Camille Parker Bowles when she caught the eye of the series’ director, Benjamin Caron, and producer Suzanne Mackie (the role ultimately went to Emerald Fennell). “We read the scene through and then Ben turned to Suzanne and said, ‘Can I tell her now?’ And Suzanne was like, ‘Let’s maybe read it through once more,'” Corrin laughs. “So we read it through once more and then Ben was like, ‘Will you be our Diana?’”
Corrin jokes that her “brain stopped functioning,” the moment after she was told, admitting she relied on O’Connor, who was present for the moment, to remember the details. “I have a complete blackout in memory from when they offered me the role to when I was in the car calling my family on the way home.”
Corrin will star as Diana for a single season, covering the early years of her tumultuous marriage to Prince Charles. Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki has been confirmed to take over as Diana for seasons five and six (Corrin compared handing over the role to “an ex moving on”), while Dominic West is rumoured to have nabbed the part of an ageing Prince Charles.
