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‘The Crown”s stars Elizabeth Debicki and Dominic West talk of the “sensitivity” in handling Princess Diana’s death

E The Crown Season5 08172021
Netflix

Elizabeth Debicki plays Princess Diana in the upcoming fifth and sixth seasons of The Crown, and the latter — which is currently being filmed — takes the time-spanning Emmy-winning drama to the point of Diana’s untimely 1997 death and beyond.

In an Entertainment Weekly cover story, the Tenet actress insists show creator Peter Morgan is being careful with the heavy content. “I’ll say that Peter and the entire crew of this job do their utmost to really handle everything with such sensitivity and truth and complexity, as do [the] actors,” Debicki said. “The amount of research and care and conversations and dialogue that happen over, from a viewer’s perspective, something probably that you would never ever notice is just immense. From that very first meeting [with] Peter, I knew that I’d entered into this space where this was taken seriously [in] a deeply caring way. So that’s my experience of the show.”

Actor Dominic West, who portrays Prince Charles opposite Debicki’s Diana, says the filmmakers feel a “heavy responsibility” to do their real-life counterparts justice.

“It’s a hell of a season [season 6], because it deals with Diana’s death and appalling scenes, like having to break that news to your sons,” the actor explained to EW.

Young actor Teddy Hawley plays Charles and Di’s son Prince Harry in season 5, opposite Timothee Sambor as his older sibling Prince William.

West explains, “I’ve got two boys of that age and so it’s a heavy, heavy responsibility to get it right and something I think we all take pretty seriously.”

Season 5 of The Crown debuts November 9 on Netflix.

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