The Netflix show, The Crown, returned last week with the fifth season of its historical drama series. As the royals enter a new decade, Season 5 features a brand-new cast, just as Season 3 had different actors for the first two seasons. The Crown will feature Prince Charles and Diana’s divorce and Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips in the latest series. A key storyline will also revolve around Princess Diana’s interview with Martin Bashir. There has been a growing interest in Elizabeth Debicki since she was announced to replace Emma Corrin as Princess Diana in Netflix’s The Crown for the next two seasons.
For those who may be unaware of the actress and her on-screen work, she has a very different life from the late Princess and isn’t even British. While Debicki is not exactly a household name, the 32-year-old Australian actress has earned recognition for her performances in compelling and critically-acclaimed roles over the years. She has appeared in various popular movies, such as The Great Gatsby, Tenet, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Continue reading further to learn more about the personal and professional life of Debicki following her debut as the late Princess of Wales.
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An ’emotional melting pot’
Born August 24, 1990, in Paris, France, Debicki is the eldest child of two ballet dancers, a Polish father and an Australian mother of Irish descent who met while performing together in Paris. She once called herself an “emotional melting pot” due to her background. “My family are very intense and passionate,” she said. “They feel things very deeply.”
Her family moved to Melbourne, Australia, when she was five. Debicki described her home life as chaotic and creative as the daughter of two theatre professionals. “The house was very alive, there was always a lot going on,” she recalled. “I used to go over to other people’s houses where that wasn’t the case and it just looked so … calm. Then all my friends would come over to my house and go, ‘Oh my god, your house is the best!’ Now I’m extremely grateful for that sort of nest that was so colourful. It certainly gave me stamina and endurance for the business – the sense that anything goes and people speak their mind.” In 2013, she told The Age of her diverse relatives, “We have a lot of family in Europe, and Paris still feels like home.”
‘The Great Gatsby’ was her big break.
Debicki made her film debut with A Few Best Men in 2011 after graduating from Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts with a degree in drama the year prior. Her big break came in 2013 with The Great Gatsby. She received critical praise, winning the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Jordan Baker in the film. In 2017, Debicki landed a supporting role in the Marvel Studios film Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. In the movie, she played Ayesha, leader of the Sovereign people. She will reprise her role in Marvel’s third movie, which will be released in 2023.
In 2019, Debicki played a lead role in the 2019 thriller The Burnt Orange Heresy alongside Claes Bang and Mick Jagger. In addition to The Cloverfield Paradox and Widows, the talented actress also featured in Tenet as Kenneth Branagh’s estranged wife, Kat. Additionally, observant listeners might have recognized her voice as Mopsy Rabbit in Peter Rabbit and Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway.
‘This isn’t going to work.’
As a child, Debicki dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer. Following in her parents’ footsteps, she began training as a dancer. Despite this, she realized she was too tall to be a ballet dancer at 17 when she stood six-foot-two. She is now six feet three inches tall. In a 2015 interview with Allure, Debicki said, “I was taller than my teachers when I was 12, and I remember the lightbulb moment: This isn’t going to work.” She then changed her focus to the theatre. According to Debicki, the transition from dancing to acting was very natural. In addition, she said, “Dancing gives an innate physical awareness—it’s physical training. Acting feels like the same medium but just with words.” She is taller than Princess Diana, who stood at 5-foot-10. As noted by biographer Tina Brown, Diana also thought that her height prohibited her from pursuing a ballet career.
‘Body image is something that’s highly complex’
According to Elizabeth’s 2020 interview with Glamour magazine, she has worked hard to maintain a healthy body image. She said, “Body image is something that’s highly complex because it’s never to do with intelligence, and you can know better, but that doesn’t stop something being indoctrinated into you.” Debicki added, “It’s shocking how systemic it’s been, how it’s come in your thinking. When I broke it down to when I was younger, a lot of it was what I thought I had to be something for someone else.” As a matter of sanity, Debicki doesn’t have an Instagram or Twitter account. “It’s kind of a foreign world to me, Instagram,” the actress told The Guardian and added that she found it “very overwhelming.” She admitted that she had the app on her phone “for about a week, and it was like when you give your grandmother email or something, and she’s like, ‘Oh dear, what’s all this?’ I was like, ‘Oh my God, what is this whole world?’ But I can see why it is so addictive.”
‘I’m really private’
The 32-year-old keeps her love life private, never discussing it online. Her raunchy sex scene in The Night Manager with Tom Hiddleston sparked rumors of a romance, but she told The Guardian in 2016, “Have I got a boyfriend-slash-girlfriend?… I don’t want to say anything. I’m really private.” However, Distractify claims she is dating Kristian Rasmussen. The first time fans got a sneak peek of Debicki’s alleged boyfriend was at the premiere of The Crown in November of 2022, per Hollywood Life.
According to the outlet, Debicki posed without Rasmussen on the red carpet, despite arriving together. The Australian native told Vogue Australia in 2018, “I’ve always been a private person. I feel like the thing I want out in the world is my work.” According to her, her personal life and work are separate. Another piece of evidence that the couple is indeed together is the Daily Mail photo of them in London getting cozy during the premiere of The Crown.
‘It was a huge relief.’
Debicki also spoke to The Guardian about the pressure she felt while taking on the iconic character of Princess Diana and the controversy surrounding the show. She told the media outlet, “I went off instinct, and I didn’t overthink it. I’ve watched this show and loved it for years. I knew I was stepping into working with people who were extremely intelligent and very sensitive about how they went about creating the script and making decisions. So I never felt like I’d jumped on unstable ground.” Debicki said that the meticulous scripts by Peter Morgan, the show’s creator, and Corrin’s performance as Princess Diana inspired her when playing the role. When asked about acting as the iconic princess, Debicki replied, “Suddenly what feels like a vast field of information is very quickly, extremely narrowed down to existing within the framework that Peter [Morgan] has built for you. It was a huge relief. I remember thinking, now my responsibility is to bring to life what he has written, and his interpretation of these events and these people.”
