Why Emma Corrin played the best Princess Diana

Note: Emma Corrin’s pronouns are they/them

I’ve seen a ton of Princess Diana movies, but none of them compare to the performance that Emma Corrin gives in The Crown.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Kristen Stewart was great in Spencer, and I also think Elizabeth Debicki was spectacular in Seasons 5 and 6 of The Crown, but I think the most memorable performance was given by Corrin themself.

They only starred in one season, coming and going like a fleeting dream, but they left such an impression on me that it’s hard to forget about them.

First of all, it’s hard to be put in a role as Princess Diana. These are some huge shoes to fill, and I think it requires a lot of strength, intelligence, and natural instinct. Being the Princess doesn’t just require you to have a pretty face – it requires you to feel the sorrows she felt, dance through the exhilarations she had, and cry through the trials she faced. I know this, because I’ve read way too many books about her…like, way more than the average person would read.

Personally, watching Corrin portray her felt refreshing, because I was going through the pandemic and I had just finished going through seven different Diana biographies. I inherited all these 500-page biographies from my mom, who got them in the late ‘90’s and early 2000’s and obsessed over them as well. I didn’t have school for five months straight and I had nothing else to do, so I ended up discovering my mom’s old books and voraciously read them to the letter.

In a way, Princess Diana helped me form a deeper bond with my mom because we shared a great fascination and admiration for her. These are some great memories I fondly look back on, and to this day, we still talk about Diana every now and then. She’s always a fun topic to touch on because she’s so iconic, so legendary, yet so human.

Because of this deep admiration for her, I ended up finishing all seven biographies, each one more interesting and eye-opening than the last; and once I finished everything, I felt like I had enough knowledge to be a Princess Diana expert, which was a near encyclopedic level of knowledge. You can still ask me anything about Diana and I’ll give you a terribly in-depth answer. I think the pandemic turned me into something I wasn’t expecting to be, and it’s straight-up crazy.

When the fourth season of The Crown came out in late 2020 (about the same time I finished these books), I was elated. It was an almost fanatical form of idolatry. When I got the news that Emma Corrin was set to play her, I was over the moon. I had never heard of this name in my entire life, but for some reason, just by looking at their face, I trusted that they were going to pull it off. I saw their promotional still with Josh O’Connor as Prince Charles, and I loved how they looked in Diana’s blue engagement outfit from Harrods’. I just thought it was great casting, and Josh O’Connor really did look a lot like Charles.

In November 2020, the day the fourth season came out, I immediately hopped on my couch and started watching it on TV. The pandemic is supposed to be horrible in retrospect, but at that moment, the legend of Princess Diana cured my boredom.

Emma Corrin looked nothing like her, but they practically embodied her. Does that make any sense?

They didn’t need Diana’s exact features to make a splash. The way they carried themself was already enough. I’m going to focus on how they portrayed Diana in the earlier episodes (before she married Charles) because that was when Diana was at her truest form. She wasn’t marred by the Royal Family’s expectations yet. She was still a young girl at heart, living in the comfortable neighborhood of Sloane Square with her flatmates.

Corrin knows how to move exactly like her: tall, awkward, gawky, but with that coy smile and magnetic blue eyes peeking from underneath her hair. It’s clear that Corrin studied her movements intently. When she first meets Charles at her foyer, she sneaks up on him like a playful nymph, and she is dressed up like one because she has a role in an upcoming school play. When we first meet her, she’s a shy, self-conscious, but witty student – a complete foil to her saucier older sister Sarah.

The best thing about Corrin’s portrayal of her is her voice. It’s not just that shy gaze, but that voice that conveys everything. It’s hard to exactly mirror Diana’s voice because it’s soft, clipped like an aristocrat’s, and dips down at the end of every sentence; but Corrin nails it and knows how to maximize it to their advantage.

When she pities herself in front of Charles, she emphasizes it. She knows how to create that shy, modest mist of intrigue. She knows that Charles (being the Prince of Wales) is constantly hounded by wild, overconfident women, and decides to use her modesty to her advantage. When Charles drives off with her older sister Sarah, she watches them almost obsessively from a window, like she’s plotting how to lure him in.

In another scene, when an exhausted and irritable Charles is driving home from a horse show, she crosses the road and recognizes him in his car. He’s still recovering from fresh grief because his beloved Uncle Dickie just died in a tragic explosion. She’s aware of this issue and capitalizes on it. She does a little curtsy for him, approaches him, and coos in that gentle tone, “Your Royal Highness, I just want to offer my condolences. It must have been completely devastating for you.”

Boom. Hook, line, and sinker. At the tender age of nineteen, she captures him in a way that no other girl can. Corrin portrays this aspect of her personality so well because they know how to portray innocence, naivety, and the joys of girlhood. They know how to pull off shy glances, coy smiles, and subtle flirtation fit for a young lady. Although Naomi Watts, Kristen Stewart, and Elizabeth Debicki portrayed Diana equally well, I believe that Emma Corrin is the closest in capturing her real spark.

At a time in my life when I was deeply fascinated with the Princess, Corrin suddenly came along and gave me a glimpse of what the real Diana would’ve been like. The energy depicted in all the biographies I read was directly translated to her scenes; all the fun and laughter in her Coleherne Court flat with her friends, the late-night drives around Buckingham Palace, and the New Wave music playing on the record player. In those brief scenes, Corrin is her.

They have a childlike sparkle in their eyes that no other actor can mirror. The more you watch them, the more you can feel a quiet wisdom in their voice and movements.

In one memorable scene, when Charles calls her flat’s phone number, Diana's too busy dancing along to Blondie’s “Call Me” to even notice. You can see her innocence in this one and how she’s just a young girl. It’s rare for The Crown to showcase young people having fun, and this is one of those special moments. She’s dressed in a baggy blue sweater and long floral skirt, emphasizing her awkward figure. When her friend yells across the room that it’s Prince Charles waiting on the other end, everyone freezes. Corrin plays the role of teenage girl well: buzzing with delight, she tries to rein in her emotions. She steps gingerly across the living room, slips into the kitchen, picks up the phone, and mutters a shy “Hello?”

Quicker than you would expect, they become Diana. As the episodes progress, you can see this happen in real time. When she helps her daycare pupils cross the street, she emanates a growing sense of strength. When she pokes fun at her sister Sarah, you can hear a sharp cleverness in her voice. When she drives around Buckingham Palace fantasizing over her marriage to Charles, you can feel that sense of dreaminess lingering in the back of her mind. These are all attributes that made Diana caring, funny, and above all, achingly human – and Emma Corrin does a fantastic job in encapsulating them.

This particular season is something I would definitely rewatch with my mom again and again. I probably wouldn’t have been able to write this article without my mom’s influence, and I’ll always appreciate her taste for it.