‘The Crown’ Will Handle Princess Diana’s Death With “Enormous" Sensitivity

Ahead of The Crown's last season — which is expected to arrive on Netflix sometime this year — executive producers Andy Harries and Suzanne Mackie spoke about how the team behind one of the most popular shows on the streamer approached one of the most sensitive topics in recent history: the death of Princess Diana. During an appearance at the Edinburgh TV Festival, the producers insisted that they took pains to be "sensitive" to the late princess's death and while audiences haven't seen the dramatization of the car crash just yet, Harries and Mackie said that it was "delicately" and "thoughtfully recreated."

“The show might be big and noisy, but we’re not. We’re thoughtful people and we’re sensitive people. There were very careful, long conversations about how we were going to do it,” Mackie said. “The audience will judge it in the end, but I think it’s been delicately, thoughtfully recreated. Elizabeth Debicki is an extraordinary actress and she was so thoughtful and considerate. She loved Diana. There’s a huge amount of respect from us all, I hope that’s evident.”

According to Deadline, Diana's passing will be featured in the "early episodes of the final season of The Crown." The scene was shot in October 2022. A source told Deadline at the time that the cast and crew understood the gravity of the situation as they filmed.

“We’ve been dreading getting to this point. The countdown is two weeks and while we’re calmly carrying on it’s fair to acknowledge that there’s a certain anxiety; a palpable sense of being slightly on edge. I mean, there’s bombshell sensitivity surrounding this one," they said. 

The source also noted that there was no plan to actually show the crash. Instead, the show would focus on what happened before and after that moment.

”It’s the run-up: the car leaving The Ritz after midnight with paparazzi in pursuit and then the aftermath with the British Ambassador to France swinging into action with the Foreign Office and then the subsequent constitutional aftermath,” the source explained.