‘The Crown’ Stars Elizabeth Debicki & Khalid Abdalla On Drawing Inspiration From CCTV Footage In Recreating Diana & Dodi’s Tragic Romance

deadline.com:

Recreating the joyful romance and deep bond that existed between Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed in the weeks leading up to their tragic deaths in a Parisian car crash after being relentlessly pursued by paparazzi helped The Crown actors Elizabeth Debicki and Khalid Abdalla navigate dramatizing the sad, dark incident for the Netflix series’ sixth season.

Speaking at a Q&A session immediately following a screening of the first episode of Season 6 at the Regency Village Theater in Westwood, Debicki admitted that, as she prepared to portray the princess whom she originally played in Season 5, she was heartbroken by the series of events leading to her demise. “I’ll be honest, I was devastated at the time,” Debicki said during the panel moderated by Deadline’s Executive Awards Editor Joe Utichi. “I remember I read all four [of the episodes] and then I took a deep breath and went and just laid down somewhere.

It’s a very unusual and challenging, beautiful experience to play these characters, and we feel a great job responsibility – ‘We take it seriously’ is kind of the wrong way to explain it.

It’s more that we take it deeply into our hearts and into our souls and we work from that place.” RELATED: ‘The Crown’ Season 6 Part 1 Recreates Diana’s Final Days: First-Look Images “And so I felt the weight of what was coming, but I thought the scripts were extremely beautiful and I trusted them and I wanted to play them,” Debicki continued. “But I could sort of feel it in the air, in a way.