23 Facts About "The Crown" Star Emma Corrin For Anyone Who Loves Her As Princess Diana
Harry Styles once looked after Emma Corrin's dog.
1. First, Emma Corrin's full name is Emma-Louise Corrin, so Emma-Louise is actually her first name.
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This was a fact Olivia Colman didn't know until she sat down to interview Emma after filming wrapped.
2. Emma was born in 1995 in Royal Tunbridge Wells in England, and she attended an all-girls boarding school growing up, ironically similar to Princess Diana.
3. One of her earliest acting roles was playing Audrey in her school's production of Little Shop of Horrors.
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4. Emma's mom has actually been mistaken for Princess Diana before, and one time it happened when she walked into a café in London mere hours after Diana's death.
Emma said, "I hesitate to tell that story because it almost sounds too insane to be true. There’s this theme throughout my life of Diana cropping up. It doesn’t feel ordinary."
5. Before The Crown, Emma previously appeared in the TV series Pennyworth as Esme Winikus, and she starred in the film Misbehaviour alongside Keira Knightley.
6. Emma was rejected from drama school — twice — and ended up studying English at Cambridge University, where she was in 19 plays as a member of a theater group called the Cambridge Footlights.
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Right after graduation in 2018, she started the process of auditioning for The Crown Season 4.
7. When The Crown was casting the role of Camilla Parker Bowles, they actually hired Emma to come in and just read for Diana off camera.
8. And while Emma's agent stressed that it was "not an audition," she prepared like it was one, so she analyzed Diana's speech patterns so she could sound like her when reading.
Emma's mom is a speech therapist and helped her prepare. She said, "No matter what Diana is saying, it kind of goes down at the end. It’s like a sadness."
9. The word Emma used to "get into" Diana's accent was "alright," and she would say it over and over again in order to practice the inflection of Diana's voice.
10. Emma found out she got the role of Princess Diana when she was with Josh O'Connor — she was told it was simply a chemistry read with Josh.
Emma recalled Benjamin Caron, one of the directors and executive producers, turning to her and saying, "Will you be our Diana?"
11. Emma went through a six-month training period where The Crown's movement coach worked with her on some random things, like how Diana would stand in a doorway.
It's centered and leaning to one side, in case you're wondering.
12. To prepare for playing Diana, Emma watched Diana: In Her Own Words "about a hundred times" and she even met with Diana's private secretary, Patrick Jephson.
Emma recalled her conversation with Patrick, saying, "[He] said that she was so funny and so happy so much of the time — I loved that."
13. She also read letters that Prince Philip and Princess Diana wrote to each other — it helped her realize how much they related to each other since they were both outsiders in this family.
Emma explained, "They wrote to each other a lot of letters, especially at a time when Diana had fallen out with the rest of the royal family. She and Philip stayed in touch...I think he genuinely did feel sympathy for her as an outsider, because I think he had felt like that too."
14. The first scene Emma filmed as Diana is when Princess Diana is woken up at Balmoral before her hunt with Prince Philip.
15. To celebrate getting the role of Princess Diana, Emma adopted an adorable dog and named him Spencer, a nod to Diana's family.
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16. Harry Styles once looked after Emma's dog when she went out to dinner and he happened to live nearby — she joked, "The thing I love about this is that my dog has no idea [it was Harry], which is, I think, the wonderful thing about it. For a dog, it's just a person."
Emma also said Harry hasn't watched her dog since and revealed she got a hilarious text from him while he was watching her dog that said, "He won't stop farting. Is this normal?"
17. When Emma filmed the moment of Diana being followed by paparazzi, it was one of the first times Emma experienced paparazzi following her in real life — basically, there were photographers surrounding the set and trying to get a pic of Emma during this scene.
Emma recalled Benjamin Caron telling her, "You and Diana are going through a very similar thing. You’re going to suddenly be in the public eye, in a role that everyone has had their eyes on. You will be in the newspaper and you’ll be papped. Anything you feel about it, be it fear or excitement or nervousness, be aware of it because that’s exactly how she would have been feeling."
19. While the song was changed in the final version of the episode, Emma was actually dancing to Cher's "Do You Believe" — there was no choreography and she just came up with the moves in the moment.
They ended up having to film the scene twice because Emma was mouthing the lyrics to "Do You Believe," but they didn't have to rights to the song and knew it would have to change.
20. She was hospitalized after filming the moment in The Crown when Princess Diana is playing in the pool with William and Harry.
Emma explained, "I'm asthmatic and I had been ill for a while with a bad cough. We were meant to be flying back that night to the UK [from filming in Spain], so we went past a hospital to get me antibiotics. The doctors gave me an oxygen test and said, 'We cannot let you go because your oxygen levels are so low,' so I was hospitalized."
21. Emma enjoyed the first three episodes of The Crown Season 4 the most because she was able to play Diana before "the tragedy" — she explained, "it was a bittersweet thing really, honestly, capturing that joyfulness and that excitement and hope she had."
Also her favorite Diana outfits are actually from the early episodes because she loved the eclectic sweaters and the yellow overalls.
22. She recently wrote and directed a short film for Gucci called Red Rendezvous, and she hopes to write more in the future.
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23. And finally, Emma said the moment she felt like she had "made it" was when a friend sent her a photo of a massive billboard going up "outside her flat" for The Crown with Emma, Olivia Colman, and Gillian Anderson on it.
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Emma continued, saying, "I just couldn't believe it. I feel like that was a huge moment."