In the months leading up to the release of The Crown season four, viewers were treated to fleeting glimpses of the royal era we’d all been waiting for with bated breath: Princess Diana and Prince Charles’ tumultuous marriage.
The season was only made all the more enticing by the numerous images that preceded it, especially the ones featuring Emma Corrin, who played Diana, in her painstakingly replicated David and Elizabeth Emanuel wedding dress.
But while the dress had been carefully recreated by the original gown’s actual designers, Princess Diana’s and Prince Charles’ 1981 royal wedding—which was viewed and listened to by nearly one billion people when it was broadcast—was not.
Many viewers were surprised, having only caught glimpses of the momentous occasion in the wedding episode, titled “Fairytale”, it seems The Crown had a very good reason for omitting it from the show.
“We never re-create things just for the sake of re-creating them. I think if we do re-create a scene—like the engagement scene, for instance, when they do the announcement—it has to be because it’s linked to something that the characters are going through. It has to be part of the story. It has to further the plot, basically,” Corrin told The Hollywood Reporter.
“The wedding scene, you can YouTube it and you could be watching it in 10 seconds, so I don’t think there’d be any point in us re-creating it.”
The series did, however, explore more of Princess Diana’s personal backstory, one which saw her thrust into a life of duty and tradition as a teenager, only for it to end in tragedy.
Speaking to marie claire upon season four’s release, Corrin said she “really struggled” during her initial days of researching Diana, knowing that she was going to portray such a beloved figure.
“I hear the word enigma, and I think that word is really spot on,” she said.
“It’s something I really struggled with in the early days of doing my research, just feeling that the fact that she was an icon makes her very untouchable. I think what really helped, to be honest, was getting the scripts and realising that I’m playing a character in Peter’s world and this is somewhat fictionalised.”
“It might have its feet in reality and those people who we know so well, but the story and the character was mine for creating, which was so much fun and actually helped me unshackle myself her and the enigma that is Diana.”
