While preparing to play Princess Diana on The Crown, Emma Corrin discovered fascinating stories about the late royal: how she let loose in Kensington Palace, pranked Prince Charles, and gelled with certain royal family members while clashing with others. But there was one story about Diana that Peter Morgan scripted into The Crown’s fourth season that was so outlandish, Corrin couldn’t believe it happened in real life.
“The Phantom of the Opera thing shocked me the most,” Corrin told Vanity Fair Thursday, referring to the scene in season four’s episode “Avalanche,” in which Princess Diana presents Prince Charles with the most audacious of wedding anniversary gifts: a recorded VHS of her performing “All I Ask of You” from Phantom of the Opera. That gift would have been cringe-worthy on its own—but Diana actually filmed the performance on the West End’s set, wearing what Vulture called, “full Christine Daaé drag.”
From what Corrin understood of the real-life event, she said, “That it’s exactly as it happened in the series—as in she hired the West End set, got a film crew in, and filmed it for Charles. Which is mental.”
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Indeed, the Phantom of the Opera’s official Twitter account confirmed the event alongside a photo of Princess Diana attending one of its shows. “‘All I Ask of You’ was always one of her favourite songs,” fact-checked the official feed, “with her once making a private video on the Phantom’s stage. Excited to see this moment in @TheCrownNetflix with the wonderful Emma Corrin.”
Annie Sulzberger, head researcher for The Crown, told The Telegraph, “We did not make this up. There were a number of [press] reports on this, enough to make us feel comfortable including it in the show. It’s a story that pre-existed the writing of the script.”
Sulzberger clarified, however, that she was unclear whether Diana actually sang the song or merely mimed or danced to it. “To minimize the number of witnesses, there is a chance they played a recording,” Sulzberger said.
In 1988, the Washington Post reported that the recording did include Diana’s vocals—and that Phantom of the Opera’s composer Andrew Lloyd Webber even attended the taping. (Though Webber has since denied this report.)
Corrin said that she actually had to film the “Uptown Girl” ballet sequence and the “All I Ask of You” performance on a consecutive Thursday and a Friday, making for a hugely stressful 48 hours.
“It was very overwhelming,” said Corrin. “I had a huge panic attack in the middle of the filming ‘All I Ask of You’ because I was knackered. Filming any kind of performance sequence means you have to do it a thousand times. And there were also a lot of people around,” said Corrin. She was performing countless takes for an entire theatrical audience, plus the Phantom of the Opera cast members onstage with her, the actual orchestra in the pit, and the conductor himself.
Hear more from Corrin on the Little Gold Men podcast.
“The real conductor is obviously very used to doing it his way. He’d been conducting it for years. And I had learned it a different way,” said Corrin. “So I started singing, and it was awful, because we basically were doing two different things. I remember everyone thinking, Oh no, because either I was going to have to try and learn a whole different version of timing and of everything, or he was going to have to bend his way. And it was fine. It was just terrifying. I was so worried about doing it badly.”
Diana and Charles were clearly incompatible, based on this uncomfortable gift exchange alone. “Me and my friends always talk about love languages,” Corrin said. “It’s like when Charles and Diana sit down for dinner, and she’s like, ‘Oh, I know you didn’t like the public performance [of “Uptown Girl”], but also this is how I tell people I love them. This is how I express myself. So I did it in a different way for you.’”
Corrin is now ceding the The Crown’s Princess Diana role to Elizabeth Debicki, who will portray the late royal in the show’s final two seasons. “We actually have a mutual friend I’m working with at the moment,” Corrin said of Debicki. “He was like, ‘I’ll put you guys in touch.’ I’d love to speak to her, but obviously only if she wants to speak to me…I totally understand if she doesn’t want to because she wants to do it her own way.”
Asked whether she wishes she could have portrayed later events in Diana’s life, Corrin said she preferred getting to play the princess’s younger years.
“I actually love my plot line, because I have the biggest attachment to young Diana,” said Corrin. “I love her so much—I think, to be honest, because the younger Diana was very undocumented. She was sort of mine to create…. But also, Elizabeth is going to have the best time. Because [in season four] you leave Diana as she is embarking on taking back her life. She starts living and fighting for herself and doing humanitarian work and traveling and really stepping into the role of the people’s princess. That will be a beautiful thing, because it will be the confident Diana.”
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