The joy of seeing Diana again

I thought Watching TV hit The Crown delve into the last months of Diana's life in its final season would feel exploitative and ghoulish in fact it was healing.

- JULIET RIEDEN

“This is going to be enormous; people have no idea, like nothing we’ve ever seen,” declares an anxious Dominic West in a surprisingly beneficent portrayal of Prince Charles in the final season of Netflix’s The Crown. Charles is accurately predicting the public reaction to the death of his former wife, Diana, Princess of Wales, but he could just as well be talking about the Aussie actor who plays her, the extraordinary Elizabeth Debicki. The show’s first four episodes are dominated by her captivating performance.

For anyone who wasn’t around to be caught up in Diana’s unique blend of vulnerability, charisma, maternal warmth and manipulative girl power, this is a chance to catch up. Through Elizabeth, viewers witness Diana’s dreamy charm lighting up the screen. It’s a fantastic piece of acting. That shy head tilt, doe eyes gazing up through her fringe, seductive plummy voice, gazelle elegance, puckish playfulness, sad search for love – OMG, Diana is back!

It’s a very strange feeling because we all know the story, whether we were there or not. Now this beautiful, vibrant young woman is about to be snatched away, again, which creates a dramatic tension all of its own.

“I was seven when it happened,” notes Elizabeth, who sees Diana’s tragedy as “a piece of human history … part of a culture. I have a very distinct memory of watching the funeral when I was a kid and watching the two princes … I was really young, I didn’t really understand what was going on.

“My mother was devastated and I was trying to process it,” she remembers.