‘The Crown’ Recap: Season 5, Episode 9 — Charles and Diana Scene

Warning: This submit comprises spoilers for Episode 9 of The Crown‘s fifth season.

They might be married, however Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s paths didn’t truly cross all that a lot throughout Season 5 of The Crown — till one lengthy scene that stands because the spotlight of the season.

Within the ninth episode, Charles and Diana’s divorce was finalized, and after the papers had been signed, Charles (performed by Dominic West) dropped by to see Diana (performed by Elizabeth Debicki) for an unexpectedly heat and frank “post-mortem” of what went fallacious of their marriage. It’s a prolonged scene, about 12 minutes lengthy, and it stood out to Debicki and West from the beginning.

“Dom and I began calling it our ‘one-act play,’” Debicki informed reporters at a Netflix press occasion on Thursday. “We didn’t see one another a lot on set as a result of the tales simply don’t interwine, actually, till that time within the season. Each time I’d see him within the trailer, we’d all the time say, ‘When are we doing that play?’”

The manufacturing took three days simply to shoot that one scene, Debicki reveals… together with “a complete day making an omelet. I’m not exaggerating.” (At one level, Diana tries to make Charles an omelet and offers up, serving him scrambled eggs as an alternative.) “I believe there’s 40 seconds of it within the scene. It was the day [showrunner] Peter [Morgan] got here to set, and he received so grumpy: ‘Are you going to make that omelet all day?’”

All informed, “I believe I made 42 omelets or one thing,” Debicki remembers, however all that repetition did show to be useful for the actors. “We had been so relaxed after making the omelet 40 occasions that once we sat down on the kitchen desk,” she notes, “we knew inevitably that it was going to descend into this actually painful place, [but] we had been all the time laughing, nonetheless, concerning the scrambled eggs.”

The scene has “this lovely motion by means of it,” she provides: “It’s the sort of materials that seems like a present since you simply get to discover a lot within the scene.” Actually, despite the fact that the scene is finally a tricky one for Diana, Debicki admits she loved it on a sure stage: “The fabric that I used to be doing is heavy, and it takes you to a very deeply unhappy place. However there’s additionally part of your actor’s mind that’s simply having probably the most superb time… I’m crying, and there’s all this snot pouring down my face, after which this little actor’s antenna pokes up and says, ‘God, that is so good. That is a lot enjoyable.’” (Extra reporting by Kimberly Roots)