Emma Corrin’s beguiling performance as the young Princess Diana in The Crown propelled the British actor to worldwide attention in 2020. Since then, Corrin, who appears on our 2023 Hollywood cover, has starred in feature films Lady Chatterley’s Lover and My Policeman, and appeared onstage in a London adaptation of the Virginia Woolf novel Orlando. They will return to television later this year in the upcoming FX limited series Retreat, and just landed the villain role in Deadpool 3, as well as a spot in the cast of Robert Eggers’s upcoming vampire movie Nosferatu. Ahead, excerpts from a conversation about acting and authenticity.
Vanity Fair: Being a public figure on social media can be very complicated when you are in the process of discovering yourself. How much do you feel like your public persona has in common with the real you?
Emma Corrin: I try to be as much myself as possible. I think it’s finding a balance so that you’re always living and presenting yourself authentically, but also keeping as much as you can of yourself private so that you have that to hold on to—not to feel like you have to overshare yourself, which I think sometimes there’s a pressure to do. That is a total learning curve, and you don’t get it right sometimes.
Do you have mentors who’ve helped you with that?
A lot of them are actually queer friends of mine whose experiences in the public have involved conversations around their gender identity and sexuality. Those people, like Dan Levy and Mae Martin, have been really amazing in just helping and guiding me where needed. No matter who we are or what our jobs are, we have a self that we present and how we feel on the inside. Everyone has a journey of combining those to feel like we’re living as ourselves. In the past that has been so restricted. So, there’s a lot of joy for me in talking about that and sharing that part of myself, because I hope that it helps others as well.
Traditionally, being a role model meant being flawless. But now it can also mean sharing your struggles.
It’s a really nice shift that a role model has evolved into something which is more about flaws than flawlessness, because I think that’s the reality of most people’s experiences.
You came out as nonbinary on Instagram a while back, publicly changing your pronouns and posting about wearing a binder. Was that scary? Did you discuss it with your team beforehand?
I didn’t! I might have [messaged them] over WhatsApp and just said, “I’m going to post this.” I don’t think there was any big discussion about it. Naively, maybe, it took me aback how much hate I got for that. It was quite a reality check. But for a lot of people, it did help. Especially around conversation of gender and stuff, it does help a lot of people to see someone living as a nonbinary person in the world. I know how much other people’s accounts helped me, that’s my motivation for keeping my social media at the moment.
You’ve played very feminine parts, from Princess Diana to Lady Chatterley. Is your desire to play those kinds of roles waning? Have you considered auditioning for male parts, or looking for nonbinary roles?
There aren’t a lot of nonbinary parts out there. We need to be supporting queer writers and developing projects and welcoming these narratives into the creative space. But also, being nonbinary for me is a very fluid space where it’s not a rejection of femininity or masculinity, it’s sort of an embrace of both. My experience on this earth has been a female one, up until recently, and I still love all those parts of me. It’s interesting that I’m not offered male parts, but I would equally be drawn to that! I suppose it’s also what the industry sees you as, and I think, hopefully, that is shifting. The beauty of acting is taking on a character that doesn’t necessarily have to be completely in tune with your own experience. It’s sort of a way to explore. But I would love to play nonbinary, new parts, male parts. Anything, as long as it’s right.
A lot of people first got to know you onscreen as Diana. Did that role color your thinking about what celebrity requires of you?
I remember when I was offered the part, one of [The Crown’s] directors, Ben Caron, came to see me. He said, “Your life’s going to change. Notice the change from this moment onwards—anything that happens to you that is different or scary, or feels like an invasion of your privacy, acknowledge that feeling because that’s exactly what she would have felt.” I had a weird parallel experience of being plucked from nowhere and suddenly having people outside my house or knocking on my door or following me home. I’ve been watching the Harry & Megan documentary and I think they talked about it so well—especially about the nature of the British tabloid press. You [have to] make sure you have a public and private side of your life, because it does change things a lot.
You are in the upcoming FX series Retreat. Do you play an American?
Yes, I’m playing an American girl from Iowa!
It was created by Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, the team behind The OA. Was it an unconventional set?
Brit and Zal are almost from a different dimension, the way their brains work. They’re so ahead of their time, the stories that they come up with. And it was an amazing shoot. We went from Iceland to a studio in New Jersey, and then to Utah. Brit is really special, and she’s in the series as well, so it was fun to act with her and be directed by her.
Do you think about creating your own projects?
I’ve got some of my own stuff in development. I’ve written a film with my friend, Avigail [Tlalim]—it’s an amazing experience, writing and being on that side of everything. I just want to tell stories in whatever capacity I can.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
