I genuinely hope Emma Corrin becomes a huge star from The Crown. She’s a one-and-done for the series – one season and that’s it. She’s said in other interviews that she didn’t book any jobs after filming The Crown because no one knew if she was any good yet and the pandemic too, of course. So, it’s smart of her to draw a line between “playing Princess Diana” and “being a hyped young actress.” She’s been eschewing the Diana-styling for most of the promotion, but this is the furthest I’ve seen her go, this British GQ Hype cover editorial. She’s really trying to look sexy and a bit punk. It’s cute. You can read her interview here. Some highlights:
What does she think Princes William and Harry will make of the show? “I can’t imagin. I’m not going to say it doesn’t matter, because that would be ignorant. If someone made a programme about my grandma, who died last year, that would be difficult for me to watch.” But would she want Diana’s sons to see her portrayal? “I’d be interested to know what they think,” she admits. Not that she would relish the awkwardness of asking them herself. “If I ever saw them at a party, I’d probably leave!”
Leaving behind Diana after one season: “It’s a shame. I’m sad about it. But I’ve moved on…”
Lady Diana’s early days: “She has no idea what she’s getting involved with. And it was more exciting to play that, because you are showing sides of somebody people don’t know.” Towards the end of the series, especially on a 1989 visit to New York, Corrin played famous moments, but she liked the early scenes, “when her fashion sense was awful”.
Is her portrayal of Diana sympathetic? “I think it is…She had this idea of what she wanted it to be, because she was so young. I drew on my own experience for that. I think of myself as young, but I was 23 when we were filming. Diana was 19; 16 at the start. When I was 16, I had a massive crush on our tennis coach and every time he came round to teach my brothers I used to sit outside and pretend to be reading something really intellectual. You do that. You do those things. You think you’re doing the coolest thing in the world when you’re a teenager and you like someone.”
She wanted to show Diana’s bulemia properly, so they amped it up. “It is a big part of someone’s experience. And [Diana] spoke candidly about it, which was incredibly ahead of its time. I wanted to do her and the condition justice…. We just realised that bulimia was a symptom and cause of a lot of her anguish.”
What she thinks about the three people in the marriage, Charles, Diana & Camilla Parker Bowles. “The real mistake was that the marriage happened in the first place.”
That last line is kind of brutal! “The real mistake was that the marriage happened in the first place.” Ouch. I mean, Charles had gotten to the point where there were open discussions about his very open affair with Camilla, and everyone in the Windsor clan was worried about that sh-t. They really found the most naive teenager they could get and forced Charles to marry her. The expectation from everyone was that Diana would be meek and docile, that she would never challenge their dowdy, out-of-touch ways. This family, my God.
This was charming too:
Cover & IG courtesy of British GQ.
She’s so not like Diana IRL, yet on-screen the resemblance is a bit scary. She needs to start scoring more jobs!!!
I’m glad that she’s not afraid to speak her mind and possibly offend the Royal Family. She says the truth about Diana and Charles.
The reason why Kate has been so “successful” in the Royal Family as opposed to Diana and Meghan is because she was willing to be moulded by the courtiers and the Royal Family. Sophie resisted for awhile but she too acceded to the demands of the courtiers and the Royal Family. I have no doubt that her controversary with the News of World “Sheikh” was aided and abetted by the Royal Family. She was made to heel and has become the Queen’s favourite.
I don’t think Kate is “successful.” Some sort of substance has to be seen in a consort. But Kate is robot like and is looked at for her wardrobe and her hairstyle. There are degrees of “cooperating”. Some of her ‘fans’ only started praising her when Meghan came along, it has nothing to do with any sort of merit or ability on Kate’s part. She also had no career or full time work before she married WIlliam.
I think Kate is only “successful” in that she’s still married to William and that the most people can say about her IS her wardrobe and hairstyle like you point out. I think the royal family (esp Charles) probably want her to work significantly more, but they like that she is a robot.
Kate is what they think they want but her extreme laziness and dimness will be more on display as she is forced to be more public. She’s been hiding behind PR for a decade and her attempts to do something now look pathetic compared to Meghan and Sophie and Camilla. As she loses her youth the lack of substance will become even more obvious.
I feel bad for her, she has given an hell of a performance, the kind of performance that shove you with awards, nominations and makes you an in demand actress, and then 2020. I hope she will have another role soon
THe royals knew all about Camilla and let the marriage happen. Charles mistake was getting involved with married women, much like his great Uncle Edward did. Only Edward did not bring in a young girl to give birth to his heirs. There were bad signs when Charles brought Camilla as escort on an official trip to Zimbabwe, before he dated Diana, the Queen ostriched over it.
Well, she’s not wrong. There were so many reasons they shouldn’t have gotten married, its no surprise the marriage was a disaster.
I think they could haVe had a sort of “working marriage” if Camilla had not been around. Maybe not based on great love but a partnership of sorts.But that said I don’t think he should have married Diana who was a teenager when he courted her and from a different generation. The main reason was though he did not love Diana.
I think even WITH Camilla it could have worked generally (like Charles’s marriage to X woman could have worked) if he was upfront about it from the beginning.* Diana expected a real marriage and not only did she not get that, she got a husband who would rather be with his mistress than her and she was treated like the outsider. It is interesting to speculate though on what things might have been like without Camilla – Charles might not have been faithful, but I imagine it would be different if he wasn’t constantly running away to be with her.
*I think this is part of why William and Kate are still together. I think he never pretended he would be faithful and made it clear that affairs were part of the deal.
Kate certainly knew the deal by the time she got the ring. But I don’t think she’s quite as ok with the cheating as she pretends. She disappeared for weeks in spring 2019 when the Rose story came out and only showed her face once the Queen gave her an Order. And she has looked more rough than she ever has in the last few years. It’s rare that she doesn’t have the dead eye look in public.
Whenever Charles or the Royals bang on about Diana, I always remember that he started grooming her for the job at 16, but they always talk about her being 19 when they married. She wasn’t even a month past turning 19 when they married. There’s something really creepy about him wooing a 16 year old. With his multiple long term affairs, he couldn’t find anyone that was not a child who would put up with that S***…. that’s why he had to marry someone really young and naive who thought he would give it up for love and marriage. It’s why Anna Wallace dumped his ass. Also, that he seems to finds it extremely important for people to think he didn’t rekindle the physical side of his relationship with Camilla until Diana was having an affair with Hewitt in 1986. These people!
She was actually a month past 20 when she got married (she was born in 61) but still. she was BARELY 20.
Diana was a month off 20 when she married. Her wedding was 29th July and her 20th birthday was 31st August. Diana wasnt far off being the most naive teenager they could find. They wanted a virgin, and a young one to mould. I remember those days. I was a child when they married. The press was always going on about her being a virgin while making smutty comments and taking pictures of her that made her legs show up behind her skirt. William has learntvfromnthat. He met the teenager but then made her wait around for 10 years to see how far she could be pushed before he married her. He found someone willing to do anything and put up with anything to become a Royal. Not someone who was in danger of getting a mind of her own later on like his mother.
Her 20th birthday was on July 1st, not August 31st!
According to Charles and his press, Diana was both a paranoid crazy person and clairvoyant to focus on the very woman he would only cheat with many years later. Also, she’s a ho who cheated first. And a nag who made him cheat on her. Charlie always hits all the sexist tropes.
Charles met Diana at a bbq when she was 16 in a bikini. people say Charles should’ve married Camilla but people forget Camilla got married way before Diana was in the picture. Technically her and Charles could’ve married and have kids, Charles didn’t want to married Camilla or anyone else for his own selfish reasons. Charles choose Diana because she was young, pretty, as someone he can prey on.
I think had Mountbatten lived, he would have persuaded Amanda, his granddaughter, to marry Charles. It was rather weird, Mountbatten taking his young granddaughter (when she was underage) on vacations with Charles coming along, while advising Charles to sow wild oats (even supplying his home Broadlands and a trysting place for Charles and various lady friends). It was under the radar because Amanda and Charles were related as second or third cousins. THen when she came of age, he wanted Amanda to be the “one” and Charles would be madly in love with her by then. A letter that came into the public domain was from Charles to Mountbatten; Charles wrote Amanda was disturbingly beautiful.
Wow that’s really disturbing.
That they were cousins or that he was prepping her to be the future queen? (which I think is a reasonable theory on Tessa’s part.)
Elizabeth and Phillip are third cousins through Victoria, so being third cousins wouldn’t stop anything .
Mountbatten was out to be part of the RF in blood ties. He would actually get to be great grandfather of a future King or QUeen if Amanda had married Charles. Charles actually did propose to Amanda but she turned him down. Had Mountbatten not been killed and been around to promote the match he might have persuaded her. to marry the Prince of Wales. Mountbatten already had helped promote the match between his nephew Philip and Princes Elizabeth.
Very saucy cover! Definitely not Di!
I feel like a lot of US viewers are not understanding that The Crown is a fictionalised account. Charles was not forced to marry Diana; Diana was not forced to marry Charles. Nor was she “the most naive teenager they could get.” That’s just insulting.