The Central Theme of 'The Crown' Season 6 Revolves Around Diana's Affection for William and Harry | Vanity Fair

By Paul Chi

Peter Morgan, creator of The Crown, promises the sixth and final season of his Netflix series will leave viewers gobsmacked. “The show takes a few unexpected turns,” Morgan told Vanity Fair at the series’ season six premiere in Los Angeles on Sunday evening. “We’ve got a few surprises in there too.”The royal drama will be released in two parts, with the first four episodes streaming on November 16. According to Morgan, the first installment is “very sequential,” depicting the events leading up to the death of Princess Diana (played by Elizabeth Debicki) and its immediate aftermath. The second half of the season (arriving December 14) will “bounce around a little bit more, with individual films almost within it.

” The focus will once again be Queen Elizabeth II (Imelda Staunton), who is preparing for her Golden Jubilee and reflects on the future of the monarchy as Prince Charles (Dominic West) and Camilla Parker Bowles (Olivia Williams) finally wed.“In a season like this, people will expect you to deal with the death of Diana. 

They will expect you to deal with William meeting Kate, they will expect you to deal with the war in Kosovo, they will expect Tony Blair. But I hope to also provide some surprises, because you don’t want to just give people what they know,” said Morgan. “The events of this season were 20 years ago. The show ends 20 years where we are today. I knew that I wanted to end the series with enough distance from where we are today that it should still feel like history. 

For some people, it may feel like recent history—20 years is a generation—and I always wanted that kind of a buffer between where we are now and where the drama ends. So I always had in mind 2003-2004, and that’s where we end.”The new season begins in 1997, a year after Diana, the Princess of Wales, divorced Prince Charles. Debicki, who portrays Diana in seasons five and six, found it emotional to depict the last year of her life. 

“I’ll be honest: I was devastated, actually. I remember I read all four [scripts], and then I took a deep breath and laid down somewhere,” Debicki said during a panel discussion with members of the Crown cast and creative team that immediately followed the screening. 

“I felt the weight of what was coming. But I thought the scripts were extremely beautiful, and I trusted them. But I could sort of feel it in the air, in a way.”With Diana’s tragic death as the main storyline this season, Debicki’s approach to playing the role emphasized Diana’s love for her two sons, William and Harry. “The things that were always important to me were, first and foremost, her relationship to her children. 

So in a way, I kind of centered my performance around that love,” Debicki said on the red carpet. “It was a guiding force for me in terms of making decisions as the character, and from what I can gather, that was also true of the person. That was really her priority in life.”Debicki found it difficult to shoot the scene in which Diana and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, rode together in an elevator at the Ritz hotel in Paris, en route to the car that would later crash and kill the couple. “It’s quite strange,” said Debicki. 

“The images of Diana and Dodi at the Ritz taken from a security camera, it’s these images that are imprinted on our collective unconsciousness. So to find yourself replicating them is a very strange experience. Nothing as an actor really prepares you for the layers of emotional ramifications. I experienced that a lot, and I kind of just let it be there. I didn’t fight it.”Khalid Abdalla, who plays Dodi Fayed, said he was honored to represent the film producer onscreen. Very few productions have fully fleshed out the son of Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed. “Part of what I hope that audiences will find in my portrayal is the full breadth of everything that could have been. Despite the fact that Dodi is a person who has been on supermarket shelves and magazines, for the last 26 years, he’s been a figure in the background and hardly anyone knows anything about him,” said Abdalla on the red carpet. 

“So one of the things that I’m proudest of is that finally, after 26 years, he might be known a little, and therefore loved a little—finally mourned.”Jonathan Pryce also returns in season six as Prince Philip, who helps a teenage Prince William, played by newcomer Rufus Kampa, manage his grief over his mother’s death. “Philip is very much as he was in [season] five, when you first see him meet Diana, and [he] offers his advice and tries to be a mentor to her. He tells her how to cope within the system, and he goes on to be that kind of figure to William after the death of Diana,” said Pryce. 

“That’s really my job, and I think that’s Philip’s job, really. One of his jobs was he guided and led the royal family, and he was involved in a lot of the decision-making.”Pryce met Dodi Fayed in 1979 when he acted in a British film, Breaking Glass, that was cofinanced by the heir. Pryce remembers Dodi as “charming, enigmatic, sensitive, and everything that Khalid brought to the role.” Pryce also met Diana a few times, and when he found out that she had tragically been killed, “it was the first time I’d ever cried about a member of the royal family,” he said.

 “I think a lot of people felt a lot of empathy and sympathy towards her, as I did. And it was a shock.”As for Debicki’s portrayal of Diana in The Crown, Pryce had nothing but praise. “I have to say that in my 51 years of experience acting, Elizabeth’s performance as Diana is an absolute treasure. It’s a performance that contains honesty, and integrity, and I cannot see it being done any better. She’s absolutely wonderful.”