In January this year, it was confirmed that Pakistani superstar Humayun Saeed will essay an important character in Netflix’s widely popular royal drama, The Crown. The actor, who has delivered several hits in the country, became Pakistan’s first actor to have bagged a prominent role in a Netflix original.
While Saeed has kept mum on his character in the show so far, his co-star, Elizabeth Debicki, who’s essaying Princess Diana in the fifth season of The Crown, has now shared her experience of working with the London Nahi Jaunga star.
“I absolutely adored Humayun — he was such a lovely actor, and such a beautiful person,” she told EW in an exclusive interview. “You never know how that’s going to feel when you’re playing things like that with an actor. So I was very lucky to have him, and I think he does such a beautiful job.”
Saeed will join the ensemble cast as Dr Hasnat Khan, a British-Pakistani heart surgeon with whom Diana had a secret two-year-long relationship — and hence it is presumed that their love affair will have some screen time in the upcoming season.
The ‘People’s Princess’ is said to have described Khan as ‘Mr Wonderful’ and in May 1996, she visited his family in Lahore too. Diana’s friends are reported to have described Hasnat as the “love of her life” and to have spoken of her distress when he ended their relationship in June 1997. Dr Hasnat attended Diana’s funeral ceremony as well.
Although the casting suggests Season 5 will cover the period up to and including Diana’s death, the 1990s was a turbulent time for the royals and so much from Windsor Castle’s catastrophic fire to Princess Anne’s divorce and Prince Charles and Prince Andrew’s separation from their wives could be the subject.
Earlier, there was chatter about showing Diana’s death in the upcoming season of The Crown. Debicki tells EW that all concerned are handling the show’s depiction of the tragedy as thoughtfully as possible. “Peter and the entire crew of this job do their utmost to really handle everything with such sensitivity and truth and complexity, as do actors,” the actor commented.
“The amount of research and care and conversations and dialogue that happen over, from a viewer’s perspective, something probably that you would never ever notice is just immense. From that very first meeting [with] Peter, I knew that I’d entered into this space where this was taken seriously [in] a deeply caring way. So that’s my experience of the show,” she added.
Further sharing antidotes that stayed with her, Debicki revealed she was particularly excited about wearing Diana’s Revenge Dress! “It fascinated me how entranced people were with that dress,” remarked Debicki. “When it became known that I had the part, I received these text messages saying congratulations, [but] there was also a huge amount of text messages about the Revenge Dress. ‘Do you get to wear the Revenge Dress?’ ‘Oh my God, you get to wear the Revenge Dress!'”
The actor said wearing the outfit felt “very significant and quite powerful, but also it provoked something in me as an actor. I can’t really explain it. It’s pretty incredible that a dress would represent a moment in history, or that this human’s life would represent so much and become so iconic. So that was a big day on set for me!”
The upcoming season will see Imelda Staunton take over from Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II while Jonathan Pryce will play her husband, Prince Philip. Meanwhile Dominic West will play Prince Charles (now King Charles III), Elizabeth Debicki will portray Princess Diana, Lesley Manville joins as the Queen’s sister Princess Margaret, and Jonny Lee Miller stars as Prime Minister John Major. The show will stream on Netflix on November 9.
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