Will The Crown show Princess Diana’s death?
Elizabeth Debicki is set to take over the role of Diana from Emma Corrin next season
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Your support makes all the difference.The fourth season of the hit royal drama The Crown debuted last week on Netflix, and saw newcomer Emma Corrin make her debut as Lady Diana Spencer.
Viewers were impressed with Corrin’s performance as the princess, and the season, set during Margaret Thatcher’s time as prime minister, recreated Diana’s turbulent relationship with Prince Charles (played by Josh O’Connor).
Diana’s death on 31 August 1997, in a car accident in Paris, remains one of the most shocking news events in recent decades.
With The Crown having incorporated Diana into its storylines, many viewers were left wondering whether the TV series would include Diana’s death in a later episode, and when.
It has already been announced that Elizabeth Debicki (Tenet; Widows) will take over the role from Corrin for the forthcoming fifth and sixth seasons of The Crown.
Read more: How accurate is The Crown season four?
This suggests that the show won’t reach 1997 until its sixth and final season.
Both Netflix and The Crown’s creative team have declined to confirm whether and how the show will approach Diana’s fatal car accident.
CNN has reported that the series would depict “the end of Princess Diana and Prince Charles’ marriage” in seasons five and six, as well as “[Diana’s] death in a car crash in Paris in 1997”. Deadline has also claimed that the series’ timeline will run up until the 2000s, though neither claim has been confirmed.
While the series is likely to show how Queen Elizabeth II and others react to the tragedy of Diana’s death, it’s possible (and perhaps likely) that The Crown will decide not to recreate the event itself.
Some other significant events in the history of the royal family have occurred off-screen on the series, with the show instead choosing to focus on the fallout and reaction inside the palace.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter earlier this month, Corrin said: “We never re-create things just for the sake of re-creating them.”
“They don’t follow any plotlines that don’t directly link to The Crown [because] everything actually has to feed back to the Queen. Even Diana’s plotline, it’s all about what she’s doing and the effect that that’s having on the Queen. That’s why it’s called The Crown.”
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