“It’s a perfect wig,” breathes the Netflix publicist solemnly, letting the phrase hang in the air for a moment. We’re high up in the dress circle of the New Wimbledon Theatre. It is January, and dotted throughout the cavernous red-velvet space below us are a director, 40-odd television crew members, and 166 extras in dinner jackets and silk gowns – channeling more 1980s pomp than a mid-Thatcher-era fundraiser. It is exactly the sort of razzmatazz you want from a show rumored to cost more than £10 million (AED 48 million) an episode, but beyond the fabulousness, what you really sense is anxiety-level anticipation. We’re all waiting for the wig.
Marilyn Monroe and Alexander the Great aside, there is no rival in the historical blonde stakes to Diana, Princess of Wales, so it took more than a year for The Crown’s producers to settle on the woman who would – who could – carry off her hair’s feathery fulsomeness for series four of the hypnotically soapy and successful royal docudrama. Spanning Diana’s life from age 16 (when she first met Prince Charles, then dating her sister, Lady Sarah Spencer, at a grouse shoot at Althorp) to 28 (when the marriage was in such a desperate state it will make viewers gasp), it was one of the most hotly contested parts ever.
Then, after a strung-out 12 months, that she says were “mad, suspenseful, and crazy,” a near unknown 24-year-old actor called Emma Corrin – who lives in a London flat-share, has a long-standing Diana obsession, and owns a cockapoo called (wait for it) Spencer – was offered the once-in-a-generation role, to play alongside Olivia Colman, Helena Bonham Carter, and the great and the good of British acting royalty.
The papers duly went mad, before secrecy descended. During the lengthy shoot for the upcoming series (they began filming in that now hard-to-recall summer of 2019), the paparazzi – with unsettling persistence – only managed to get a handful of long-lens snaps of Corrin in full Diana garb.
Back in Wimbledon, a hush descends as the crew’s walkie-talkies crackle, “Emma to set.” By the time Corrin emerges from the wings, I am actually holding my breath. With minimal fanfare, she removes a long puffer jacket, revealing a divine replica of the bias-cut ivory silk dress that Diana wore to dance – with ballet dancer Wayne Sleep – to “Uptown Girl” at the Royal Opera House in 1985, as Prince Charles (now played by actor Josh O’Connor), by then her husband of four years, gazed on curiously from his box.
Watching the stage, it’s surreal to hear Billy Joel’s song start to play. Even more surreal, Corrin’s body suddenly seems to lengthen, her chin drops and her shoulders take on a tiny, telltale hint of nerves – the precise stance you may recall from watching Diana’s wedding day or her minefield walks, all caught in the glare of hundreds of flashbulbs. It gives me serious tingles, a sensation I’m reminded of in June, when Corrin and I meet on Hampstead Heath, and she tells me about the hook words she developed to be able to fall in and out of Diana’s accent on demand. “All right?” she says simply, titling her head and gifting the two syllables every last ounce of Lady Di’s Sloane Ranger-got-cool realness. It is like seeing a ghost.
I recall thinking, both in Hampstead and in Wimbledon, “I hope she’s ready for what’s coming.” Because, thanks to Netflix’s 193 million-and-growing subscribers, everyone is soon going to be talking about this performance. And thanks to the “Diana Factor” they are going to be talking about the series like never before, too, with Corrin set to play the whole nine yards of the years chronicled by Andrew Morton. Her knockout debut at Balmoral, early marriage, royal tours, and motherhood are all on the table – but so, too, are infidelity, bulimia, and the frequently painful psychological extremes of royal life. The script affords Diana a great deal of sympathy – so much so you can almost hear a fresh round of tabloid headlines rumbling into view.
The actor set to play her – who hails from Kent via Cambridge University, where she was a star of the student drama scene and picked up an agent – is not a brash fame hunter.
“I’m excited for people to see it,” she says on the heath, many weeks – and a lockdown – after she wrapped filming. It’s one of those slightly drizzly, swampy London days, but we decide to go for a stroll, Spencer in tow. Un-Diana’d it is hard to spot the factors that led to her chameleonic transformation on screen. Her neat brown hair framing a face of pure symmetry, wearing jeans and a Marc Jacobs “I Hate Art” sweater, she is so neutral-looking that you imagine she could play anyone. “Some people are very weird about her,” she says, thoughtfully of Diana. “I just have to realize that this is someone who is so universally adored, everyone is going to have an opinion.”