Emma Corrin has revealed she’s long been a fan of the Royal Family – so much so that she attended Prince William and Kate Middleton's royal wedding as a teenager.
During a virtual interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday, the actor noted that she wasn’t a ‘massive royal family person’ growing up but developed a love for the royals in the lead up to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s nuptials at Westminster Abbey on April 29, 2011.
‘I remember 10 years ago, I was 15, I was with my friend Katherine and we got very very swept up in the royal wedding fever I think probably because we were both very bored and very single. So we decided to go,’ The Crown star revealed.
The Golden Globe winner and her friend even went as far as to buy a DVD about the couple’s romance which she said involved acting that was ‘so bad that it's so good’.
‘We were so excited because my friend Katherine had this great inflatable daffodil. I remember that when we were watching the footage back to see if we could get a glimpse of ourselves, we couldn't see ourselves but we did see, in the middle of these crowds, this massive inflatable daffodil that she was holding up,’ she added.
The star, who plays Prince William’s mother – the late Princess Diana – in season four of the award-winning Netflix series, noted that while she tried to ‘absorb as much information as I could’ to portray her character, it was her mother who helped her perfect the Princess of Wales’ dialect in the early days of rehearsing.
‘She's a speech therapist ... and was amazing and helped me with my auditions when I was prepping for them,’ the actor noted. ‘She would give me tips on the voice. We would sit in this little cafe near where I lived at the time and help me do the voice and say, “Oh well she sort of speaks with this sort of lilt at the end of her voice”, and it was very sweet.’
In an interview with the Wrap, Corrin opened up about what it’s like knowing Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have viewed The Crown.
‘It’s really interesting,’ she said. ‘Personally, I try not to engage with it because I feel like it’s a slippery slope and if I start worrying about who’s seen it and what they think, it becomes stressful. But I sit comfortably in the knowledge that what we’ve created is Peter’s version of things. So hopefully, it’s its own thing. But in a way, I suppose it can never be completely detached from the reality that it touches and that it’s influenced by.’
The 25-year-old also said that filming of the series was cut short by two weeks as a result of the pandemic and that her final scene involved her filming at the top of a skyscraper in London.
‘There was a scene where Diana walked out onto the roof garden, and they wanted me to look over the horizon. They were going to CGI in New York. It was bizarre because I was standing on the roof and they were playing this emotional music to try and get me to be emotional.
‘And I remember finding it really strange that there were no planes in the sky, because normally in London, there are planes all the time. I remember being like, “Whoa, it feels like the world has shut down.” And that was literally just before we went into lockdown.’
The star noted that in the moment she felt like she could have been ‘the only person in the world’. ‘It was really bizarre, looking back. Kind of insane that was what I ended on.’
Insane, indeed!
Katie O'Malley is the Site Director on ELLE UK. On a daily basis you’ll find Katie managing all digital workflow, editing site, video and newsletter content, liaising with commercial and sales teams on new partnerships and deals (eg Nike, Tiffany & Co., Cartier etc), implementing new digital strategies and compiling in-depth data traffic, SEO and ecomm reports. In addition to appearing on the radio and on TV, as well as interviewing everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Rishi Sunak PM, Katie enjoys writing about lifestyle, culture, wellness, fitness, fashion, and more.
