I knew what was coming... so I put off reading the scripts for as long as I could

As The Crown returns for its sixth and final season with some of its most controversial storylines yet, Elizabeth Debicki talks about the pressures of playing the magical’ late Princess Diana in the hit historical drama

- Gabrielle Donnelly

WHEN Elizabeth Debicki was growing up in Melbourne, she would sometimes accompany her mother on the supermarket run. "I remember standing in the checkout line and looking at the women's magazines which were so big in the 1990s," she recalls today.

"I was only at head height with them, but I have a specific memory of looking at this incredibly beautiful woman on the cover who was from another land and was actually a princess, which seemed quite magical at the time. Of course, I had no idea of the politics at hand to do with any of that coverage, she was just this magical princess lady." Then quite suddenly, she now recalls, the story turned more sombre.

"I remember seeing my mother watch the funeral procession," she says softly. "I was sat on the floor and she was devastated, and I didn't understand.

"I can't remember what she said to me to try to explain - she must have said something like, 'She was just a very, very beautiful lady, and we'll miss her'.

"It was kind of that thing when you're a child and your parents are upset and you're trying to understand the significance of the event and why it's upset them so much.

"So I did pay attention to the funeral and I specifically remember watching the boys and seeing how sad they were - they were so young, and I was a kid too, so in a funny way I sort of related to them. It's quite a strong core memory for me." All these years later, Debicki is revisiting her memories via her portrayal of the late Princess Diana in the highly anticipated sixth and final season of Peter Morgan's sweeping historical drama The Crown which returned to Netflix this week.

The drama, though massively popular around the world, has already proved controversial in its reshaping of royal history.