AS THE FINAL SEASON BEGINS

STARS SHARE SECRETS AS HIT ROYAL DRAMA BOWS OUT IN STYLE

For the past seven years, The Crown has been captivating viewers with its signature blend of stellar acting, forensic attention to detail and dramatised retelling of British royal history. And this week, the Netflix drama returns for its sixth and final season, chronicling events in the royal family that many of us will remember, including the outpouring of grief that followed the tragic death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Spanning the late 1990s and early 2000s, the series will be shown in two parts, with the first four episodes, which debut this week, picking up where the series five finale left off – following Diana’s holiday with Dodi Fayed in St Tropez. The A-list cast once again brings together a galaxy of big names and rising stars, with former Oscar nominee Imelda Staunton reprising her role as Queen Elizabeth II and Dominic West returning as Prince Charles. Lesley Manville is back to play Princess Margaret, while Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki portrays Diana again. The cast also includes some names that will soon be much better known, with Meg Bellamy and Ed McVey (who takes over from Rufus Kampa) joining in the second half of the season – out next month – to play Prince William and Kate Middleton as their love blossoms at university. Here, the glittering cast of season six share backstage secrets and their experiences of being part of the hit royal drama, from the poignancy of returning to filming following the death of the real-life Queen Elizabeth to the process of re-creating Diana’s final days.

Elizabeth Debicki (left) returns to play Diana, recreating (above) the Princess’s trip to a minefield in Angola in January 1997 (right). Khalid Abdalla (far right with Elizabeth) plays her partner Dodi Fayed (pictured bottom right with Diana in St Tropez, a month before the pair were killed in a Paris car crash)

‘Our job is to ask questions about that time’

Khalid Abdalla

ELIZABETH DEBICKI Princess Diana 

For Elizabeth Debicki, returning to work on the new season after making her debut as Diana in 2022 felt “like coming home”.

Being “present” in her scenes depicting Diana’s final days, which were filmed in Majorca, helped Elizabeth counteract the sadness of portraying the royal’s tragic death.

“We were in a really beautiful part of the world, so I let that wash over me and just tried to relax,” she says. “Knowing what was to come, in terms of the sequence of the final 24 hours, was very demanding, and I was carrying this profound sadness in me while I was shooting. So when I wasn’t doing that, I let myself be very happy.”