Elizabeth Debicki has taken over from Emma Corrin in playing the Princess of Wales in the Netflix series
(Picture: Keith Bernstein/Netflix/PA)When Season 5 of The Crown eventually makes its debut on Wednesday, Elizabeth Debicki will forever cement herself as the face of one of the most iconic figures in history, Princess Diana.
But when the 32-year-old first auditioned for the series in Season 2, it was for a different part altogether, one which she has never revealed.
Since it was announced that Debicki would be taking over from Emma Corrin as the Princess of Wales in the Netflix series, all eyes have been on the 6 foot 3-inch Australian actress.
Describing herself as a private person and absent from all social media platforms, little had been known about Debicki until she won recognition with those breathtaking first promo shots of The Crown. Lounging melancholically on a plush sofa in an eerie likeness to Lady Di, Debicki has captivated fans ever since.
Best known for playing Jordan Baker in Baz Lurhmann’s The Great Gatsby a decade before, a role she landed fresh out of university, Debicki’s career has been a tale of steady ascent to stardom.
Here’s everything you need to know about the actress before her debut as Princess Diana.
Early life: a Parisian-Australian ballet dancer
Born in Paris in 1990, Debicki is the eldest child of two ballet dancers, who met while performing together in the French capital.
When she was five, she and her family moved to a “very normal, very boring” (according to Debicki) suburb in Melbourne, Australia, where she was raised. With two theatrical parents, Debicki described her home life as chaotic and creative. “The house was very alive, there was always a lot going on,” she recalled. “I used to go over to other people’s houses, where that wasn’t the case, and it just looked so… calm. Then all my friends would come over to my house and go, ‘Oh my God, your house is the best!’”
Debicki once described herself as an “emotional melting pot,” which she attributed to her Polish and Irish background. “My family are very intense and passionate,” she said in 2018. “They feel things very deeply.”
An extremely studious pupil, Debicki read voraciously. She became interested in ballet at an early age and trained as a dancer until deciding to switch to theatre. A drama teacher at her school spotted her potential and decided to help her to audition for acting school.
After achieving perfect scores in drama and English, she got into the Victorian College of Arts, later winning a prestigious scholarship.
Finding fame with The Great Gatsby
Aged just 21, Debicki’s audition reel caught the attention of none other than renowned Australian director Baz Luhrmann, who was in the process of casting for his star-studded adaptation of The Great Gatsby.
Lurhmann was captivated by Debicki. He brought half of Hollywood to her native Australia to shoot the movie, in which she played Jordan Baker, the golf-playing socialite and aloof best friend of Daisy Buchanan.
Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald about the experience, Debicki described her dream come true. “It was the highest of high blessings,” she said. “I will never not be grateful for him as a human being, what he taught me, the experience, the exposure of it.” Her portrayal in the film received critical appraisal, winning an Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.
Following the success of the Great Gatsby, Debicki’s career became one of quiet, steady success.
She went on to land several more supporting and leading roles. Some of her bigger projects include Ayesha in the Marvel film Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 (she will return for the third instalment); the hilariously forbidding villain in Guy Ritchie’s The Man from UNCLE; and playing Virginia Woolf in Vita and Virginia. She has also appeared in two critically acclaimed TV series, The Night Manager and The Kettering Incident.
The Crown: Princess Diana and media backlash
When Debicki first auditioned for The Crown, it wasn’t to play the role of Diana at all.
Speaking to the Guardian before Season 5’s release, Debicki said that she had auditioned for an undisclosed role for Season 2. Shortly afterwards, she was asked if she would be interested in portraying Princess Diana in the future.
A few years later, when The Crown creator Peter Morgan contacted her about the role, Debicki said yes, and she was formally cast in 2020.
Despite the inevitable controversy that has surrounded the series, Debicki has not been fazed. “I went off instinct, and I didn’t overthink it,” she told the Guardian. “I’ve watched this show and loved it for years. I knew I was stepping into working with people who were extremely intelligent and very sensitive about how they went about creating the script and making decisions. So I never felt like I’d jumped on unstable ground.”
An added bonus is that she doesn’t follow royal news at all: “The Daily Mail makes me nauseous,” she told Vogue last week.
She was, however, acutely aware of the pressure of one particular moment in the upcoming series: the “revenge dress”.
“When people in my life found out that I was going to play this part, this was the dress that everyone texted me about,” she said to British Vogue of Princess Diana’s infamous Christina Stambolian LBD – instantly christened the “revenge dress” by the press when she wore it on the same night the-then Prince of Wales confessed to adultery in a TV interview in 1994. “That’s when I started to realise how symbolic this dress is to people.”
Romance rumours, private life, and social media
Little is known about Debicki’s private life, and that is largely by design.
Mostly keeping her head down, she lives a nomadic life on set with occasional stretches at her London home, where she has lived on and off for years.
Despite her ascent towards the A-list, Debicki has resisted the call of social media, something which is unusual among newer recruits to Hollywood.
“I’ve always been a private person,” she told Vogue Australia in 2018. “I feel like the thing I want out in the world is my work and I’ve always believed… that me and the work are separate. I think that people with social media can blur it so beautifully, and I respect that, but it’s not really how I am.”
When it comes to love life, Debicki has never publicly dated anyone — though there have been rumours that she had a relationship with her The Night Manager co-star Tom Hiddleston. She said “it was almost impossible not to fall completely in love” with the Loki star during filming, but the relationship was never confirmed.
When the Guardian asked her if she was dating anyone in a 2016 interview, she responded coyly: “Have I got a boyfriend-slash-girlfriend? That’s very liberal of you. I don’t want to say anything. I’m really private.”
