As The Crown returns for its sixth and final season, fans and critics the world over have been wondering how Netflix’s historical drama will cover the sensitive topic of Princess Diana’s death.
As the show moves into the late Nineties, Prince Charles (Dominic West) is trying to the approval of the public and his mother the Queen (Imelda Staunton) for his relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles (Olivia Williams), while Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) is entering a new stage of her life and dating Dodi Fayed.
News that the show would include the death of Diana and Fayed, who died in August 1997 in a car crash in Paris alongside their driver while being chased by paparazzi, was met with criticism.
Early reports from during filming claimed that cast and crew were “on edge” and had been “dreading” filming the death. Speaking in August, however, executive producer Suzanne Mackie insisted that it had been of the utmost importance to the team that the tragedy was handled “sensitively”.
But while viewers may have been anxiously anticipating the inclusion of Diana’s death in the new season, the crash features in the very first scene of season six.
The final season, the first part of which arrived on Netflix on Thursday (16 November), opens with an unnamed man stepping out onto the evening streets of Paris to walk his dog, with the camera panning up to show the lit-up Eiffel Tower shining above the street.
Smoking a cigarette, the man walks his dog around the block, talking to his pet in French as he goes. “First you want to go out, then you don’t,” he asks. “You want to pee, then you don’t. Which is it?”
The man continues to walk the animal along the Seine and up between some trees, when a car speeds past, swerving as it enters a tunnel. He sees a flurry of motorbikes approaching and immediately hears a crash from within the tunnel.
Fayed (Khalid Abdalla) and Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) begin their romance— (Daniel Escale/Netflix)
As a car horn blares, he gets his phone out of his pocket as more bikes whizz past. “Hello? Emergency services?” he says. “I’m at Pont de l’Alma. There’s been a crash in the tunnel. I think it’s serious.” While the motorbikes have continued driving towards the tunnel, he sees them stop outside.
The Crown’s lavish opening credit sequence then rolls, after which the action flashes back in time, with the words: “Eight weeks earlier” emblazoned on the screen as The Crown returns to earlier in the summer of 1997.
Australian actor Debicki took over the role of Diana on Peter Morgan’s royal drama from Emma Corrin, who played the late royal in season four. Debicki made her debut as Diana in 2022’s season five.
Speaking ahead of the new run of episodes, The Great Gatsby star spoke about playing Diana in her final few days, when she was being hounded by the paparazzi.
“It was difficult to recreate,” she said. “It was heavy and very manic, and incredibly invasive. And it had a kind of pressure to it.
“At times it’s almost like an animalistic response to being pursued, by that many actors playing the press, because there’s nowhere you can go and you only have to be in a situation like that for about a minute, before you realise this is completely unbearable.”
The Crown season six part one is on Netflix now, with part two arriving on 14 December.
