Capturing a Princess — The Crown's Final season

Critically and commercially successful, The Crown conjured for millions of viewers the behind-the-scenes moments that sparked new conversations about the benchmarks of the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

Through six seasons, the scandals and the heartbreak, the strengths and vulnerabilities — and the public traditions and private moments in the lives of the royal family — have been cinematically crafted to deliver a narrative based on conjecture, but hung on thorough research.

The story has been woven into a must-watch television series. As it caught up with events that occurred within our current time frame, most notably the destruction of Princess Diana’s marriage to Prince Charles (now King Charles) and her subsequent untimely death, it's started to have a subtle effect on the public relations of the king. The casting of Dominic West (The Wire, The Affair) as Prince Charles was a brilliant stroke. The actor is highly regarded and a bit of a sex symbol. He's brought empathy to the role. His depiction of Charles post Diana’s death is thoughtful, supportive and with an awareness of public perception.

The opening episodes of the final season focus on Diana's romance, post her divorce from Charles, with Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla) son of billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed (owner of the Hôtel Ritz Paris and Harrods department store). To say it evokes even greater sadness for the woman who had the misfortune and naiveté to marry a man who was in love with another woman, Camilla Parker Bowles, is an understatement. The subsequent “romance” is presented as the connivance of an ambitious father, Al-Fayed, exerting his will on his son to marry a beautiful jewel at the expense of Dodi’s relationship with another woman, Kelly Fisher, played by Erin Richards .

The young princes William, played by Rufus Kampa, and Harry, by Fflyn Edwards (The Continental: From the World of John Wick), are well cast and the scenes with the boys and their mum are all the more poignant as we now know the royal's story and are aware of the ramifications for Harry in particular.

Australian Elizabeth Debicki (The Great Gatsby and Tenet), with lithe grace and impressive height, captures Diana well; clothing and hair do the rest.

While the actors’ strike was under way, the Sunday Times interviewed the invisible people who seldom get credit, but help to make an actor’s performance a success with movement coaching, costume and setting. The collaboration of the cast and crew has resulted in authentic recreation of moments that have become part of society’s collective memory, so you feel you're living history and can be forgiven for whispering cautionary advice — “Don’t go there!” — to the people’s princess.

Diana's costumes helped to solidify Debicki's role. “You’d get goosebumps. It made us feel as if we were actually seeing Diana get out of a car,” said head buyer and assistant costume designer Sidonie Roberts. “There were some moments that were particularly recognisable. There’s a lapse in the brain, so you are part of it.” There’s a reveal and a discovery that results from the private understanding of a public moment. One particular scene stays with her. “There’s a moment when Diana is leaving the villa with Dodi. She’s cascading down a hilltop in white and navy-blue striped trousers and a sleeveless navy and white top. Everybody at the bottom of the hill is looking up in awe. That’s my favourite moment because she looks so much like Di.”

Movement coach Polly Bennett was responsible for the physical mannerisms that trick the viewer’s eye by recreating Diana's body language. The way the princess carried herself encapsulated the professionalism of a public person, while giving the sense of  genuine warmth and intimacy that is clear between Debicki and the actors who portrayed the young princes. “Rufus and Fflyn underwent exercises so the trio’s intimacy became tangible. It was about sharing electric currents between their bodies. Seeing that happen on screen is really gorgeous,” said Bennett.

She sketched her process: “People carry everything they experience in their bodies. The lives of those depicted in The Crown are widely documented and we accessed all of what was available. When you look at a picture of Princess Diana and have a reaction, for example: 'She feels ... (such and such)'. My job is to work out what makes us deduce that feeling we detect in her body language? Is it the way her weight is on one side of her body? Is it where she isn't looking? What she isn't doing? We build that into the choreography. A movement language builds from the inside out. When Diana tilts her head and looks up, I try to find a reason that happens and to work with the actor to do that. I looked at pictures of Diana as a child and found she did the head tilt quite a lot. That mannerism continued as she got older. It becomes like connected tissue.”

Bennet had a different experience when directing the movement for Prince Charles. “We worked with the image of the crown constantly being over his head explaining the rather collapsed-upon-his-spine posture of the future monarch. He’s constantly under the weight of something because he’s underneath the crown and the impending shift.”

With West as Charles, you notice the character often gnaws his lower lip, which resulted in making the audience feel more sympathetic towards His Royal Highness. Bennet points out that Prince Charles revealed his inner anxiety in a television interview by chewing his lower lip. West incorporated that into his portrayal.

Of course, no discussion about Diana could satisfactorily happen without a note on fashion. Her style sparked worldwide trends. She made it OK for women to wear flats. During her arc in the public eye she matured from demure romantic pastels and ruffles to elegant fitted fare. The series focuses on her time on holiday, so she is more herself than at any other time she was in the public eye. She's also less under the influence of the palace.

Side bar

Costume designer Amy Roberts on the portrayal of Diana’s fashion

Gottex, the company that made Diana’s swimsuits, made three out of five of the swimwear pieces worn by Debicki in season six. Diana was famously photographed in a leopard print one-piece by paparazzi on Camilla's birthday. [Some have said this was purposeful, designed to take attention away from her rival, highlighting (critically and with admiration) how Diana used her currency — her style and fame — to gain attention.

Designer collabs

Designer brands are specific about how they want to be portrayed. The only designer we worked with was David Emanuel for the princess's wedding dress because we needed to get his approval and permission

Hair and makeup designer Cate Hall on Princess Diana's look

Elizabeth Debicki has quite a feline eye shape, so we did a lot of shading to try to make her eyes more round and doe-eyed.

And on the wigs

Many of the principle cast members had three to six wigs each. We'd wrap the actor’s head in clear film, surround it with tape to make an accurate head shape and then draw on the hairline with a Sharpie. We chose lots of different hair colours and textures from samples which were distributed through the wig to make it three dimensional. Teams spent weeks hunched over knotting the wigs, sometimes hair by hair. Actors sat through many hours of us gingerly snipping at these wigs because obviously the hair doesn't grow back and the wigs are expensive. We went through many fittings. We set the wigs with different techniques, like baking them in ovens. We put them back on the actors' heads and razored them a bit more to sculpt them into shape. Eventually we ended up with something that looked right.

In season four, Diana's flatmates were put in old Claire Foy wigs from season one that were cut and dyed into ’80s shapes.

Series set decorator Alison Harvey on the details

Diana had a Rolodex of all her contacts and little mementos from Australia — and photos of the boys — so we tried to create a little emotional terrain for these objects on her desk.

And on her biggest challenge

It was recreating the paparazzi's' telephoto lenses. They're carried onto the speedboats around the yacht and were £40,000 to buy one lens. We couldn’t buy them or hire them because of the risk of one of them falling in the water. So we had to make them all and adapt them to the water. We spent a lot of time and money getting them to look real because the paparazzi interest around the royals was at its peak when Diana was on the yacht, which was an important narrative thread that led into the rest of the story with the paparazzi on the fateful night of Diana's death, so we had to get it right.

And on props that were stolen during the making of the fifth season

Three trucks of expensive hired props were on their way to Yorkshire for a scene. The trucks were broken into and everything was stolen. Anything the robbers didn't really like, they threw into the canal at the back of the hotel. One was an absolutely perfect lifelike example of a naked body. It was found the next morning floating upside down and reported as a murder to the local police. Police actually confiscated the fake body as evidence and didn't gave it back.