Elizabeth Debicki, who plays Diana, Princess of Wales, in season 5 of The Crown, has revealed that she got the role after auditioning for a minor role in season 2.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter (opens in new tab), Debicki recalled: “My agent says, ‘Would you go in and audition for this one episode, small part, for season two.’ So I say, ‘I’m not at all physically right for that part. I don’t think I work. I don’t think I want to do that.’ And she said, ‘Of course you’ve got to just do it because these people are making this amazing TV show.’ So I go into this audition and there’s the casting director there and some producers, when I get halfway through the scenes, and it’s a bit like, ‘OK, thank you so much for coming,’ and I go home with my tail between my legs.”
As for what that role was, Debicki doesn’t say. However, things turned out better than she could have imagined. “They saw something Diana-y in that audition, which surprised no one more than me when I got the email a few days later. And it was sort of faintly penciling it in like, “We think this might be a good fit and we’ll bring it up in four years’ time,” which in an actor’s life is like an eternity. You’re like, ‘Well, I’ll be old then! I want to do it now!’ It was very, very loosely on the back burner in my mind. But I’d always hoped that it would come back around, but I didn’t know. And then it did and then I was asked to do it in 2020.”
