Emma Corrin: Landing Princess Diana role was 'like a marriage proposal'

Emma Corrin says landing the role of Princess Diana in ‘The Crown’ was “like a marriage proposal”.

The 25-year-old actress played the late Princess of Wales in season four of the hit Netflix series, and has said they actually first stepped on set during season three, when they were asked to attend a “chemistry read” with Josh O’Connor, who played Prince Charles.

And when Emma – who recently came out as non-binary and uses she/they pronouns – was finally asked to play Diana, they admitted it felt like they were being proposed to.

They said: "They were doing some pickups for season 3 and they had asked me to come to set where they were filming to do a chemistry read with Josh.

“I remember we did the scene a couple of times and then Ben [Caron, the director] turned to Suzanne [Mackie, the producer] and was like, 'Can I do it now?' And he sort of got down and was like, 'Will you be Diana?' It felt kind of like a marriage proposal."

Emma said yes to the offer and immediately got to work researching the royal, who died in a car crash in 1997.

They added: “To start with there was a lot of reading, and watching and that kind of thing. But I actually found that I sort of reached a bit of a brick wall with it."

And to help them get even closer to the character, Emma enlisted the help of choreographer Polly Bennett, who got them to really understand how Diana moved and carried herself.

They explained to People magazine: "A lot changed when I started working with Polly Bennett and we did a lot of character and movement stuff together. We started working on basically figuring her out, inside out. So taking our story, the scripts, and figuring out her arc over the series and what she'd be feeling at this moment, and then why she would do that."