Princess Diana’s Swimsuit Moment In The Crown Captured Her ‘Profound Isolation’
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Taken just a week before she and her rumored lover Dodi Fayed would be killed in a car crash after a chase by photographers, Princess Diana’s swimsuit moment, re-enacted with haunting accuracy in The Crown, would capture her in solemn seclusion. The photograph was taken on August 24, 1997; by 7 days later, she, her alleged boyfriend and their driver Henri Paul would be dead.
Having holidayed in Sardinia, it’s believed that Diana and Fayed planned to travel to his private estate in Paris, but they died in the early hours of August 31, after her car crashed in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel following a chase from the paparazzi. Diana’s bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, survived the crash with serious injuries.
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According to Oprah magazine, the posted speed limit for the road was 30 miles per hour, however, Paul approached the entrance of the tunnel at around 70 miles per hour, which led him to lose control of the car and collide with a pillar in the middle of the highway. In critical condition, Diana was rushed to the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital where she died.
Diana suffered from a concussion, a broken arm, a cut thigh and massive chest injuries. After a two-hour operation to save her, the doctors failed to get Diana’s heart to beat properly and she never regained consciousness. She died from internal bleeding at 4:53 a.m. So Princess Diana’s swimsuit moment was something incredibly important to Elizabeth Debicki, who plays Diana in Netflix’s The Crown. Here’s what she had to say about it.
Princess Diana’s swimsuit
“There were lots of swimsuits on Diana this year,” one of The Crown’s costume designers, Sidonie Roberts told Harper’s Bazaar. “She’s wearing them for four episodes – in fact, the majority of her outfits on her rail for this season were swimsuits. That blue swimsuit is so iconic,” Roberts continued. “That image of her, what we call ‘walking the plank’ and sitting at the end there, it’s so iconic that I think for an actor when they’re in that, it makes them feel completely in their character.”
Debicki told Entertainment Weekly that recreating that moment “felt like a peak of a sort of iconic mountain that we were climbing towards. I suppose in a way [the peak of] the last season was the recreation of the ‘revenge dress’ moment. I think the blue swimsuit was that for us in this season. I was really nervous that day, swimsuit aside. I trusted the swimsuit! We’d had many swimsuit fittings, we have an amazing woman that makes them, because nobody wears that shape of swimsuit anymore, so we had to structure it and make it that really iconic ‘90s shape. But there was something about walking out across that diving board and understanding what we were recreating. We know what that shot is, it represents this moment, this sort of calm before a storm.”
She continued: “This imagery represents so much, doesn’t it?” Debicki continues. “It’s the captured moment. Was she aware [of the photographers]? Was she not? But also, [it’s] a moment of profound isolation and loneliness. There was a part of my brain that really reveled in exploring that moment when I walked out to the diving board. I didn’t really know what it was going to feel like, and what I found on the end of that board was something both meditative but also deeply sad. Yeah, it really moved me, making that shot.”
According to one paparazzo in the documentary Sex & Power, the romance was just for show: “No-one knows this, so it’s actually quite interesting. [The crew member] said, ‘They don’t share the same bedroom, he calls her ma’am, is incredibly deferential and respectful. But as soon as she goes outside to wave to the paps, she’s bending over and kissing him and hugging him’… The truth [of their romance] is the opposite.”
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Diana and Dodi’s alleged affair
When photos emerged of Princess Diana and Dodi embracing on a yacht off the coast of Sardinia and became front-page news, his fiance Kelly Fisher held a press conference along with her mom and renowned lawyer Gloria Allred, who announced she would be suing Dodi for breach of the marital contract. Her sparkly engagement ring was displayed for photographers.
Allred argued that Dodi encouraged Fisher to spend less time modeling and more time with him, and he allegedly offered her $500,000 as an incentive. Fisher said she only received $60,000, with a $200,000 check bouncing; her lawsuit was seeking the remainder.
“Miss Fisher loved and trusted Mr. Fayed. In return, he took her love and he gave every indication that they were going to get married and that he would fulfill his promises to her. In the end, he betrayed her and has humiliated her in the eyes of her friends and family and numerous others who were aware of the relationship and have now seen the evidence of his public betrayal,” Allred told reporters at the time while a tearful Fisher looked on.
Fisher’s mother Judith also issued a statement at the press conference: “A frog who wishes to become a prince charming, Mr. Fayed may be able to afford princely clothing and act as though he is of royal blood, but beneath that exterior, there is no prince only a frog in prince’s clothing,” she said. “No one’s daughter deserves to be treated as my daughter was. Kelly loved him, trusted him and has been treated very cruelly by him. Dodi Fayed should be ashamed because he has not only hurt her but my whole family.” Dodi’s father, meanwhile, Mohamed Al-Fayed slammed Fisher as a “gold digger” at the time, the family denying his son had ever proposed marriage, but did concede that they knew each other.
The lawsuit was dropped after Dodi and Diana were killed in Paris. Allred said in a statement at the time, “Out of respect for the tragedy, and tremendous loss the Fayed family has suffered, she has authorized me as her attorney, to dismiss her lawsuit against Mr Fayed. Although she does have the legal right to pursue the lawsuit against his estate after his death, she has voluntarily chosen not to exercise that right.” She continued, “Kelly loved Dodi very much, and she is devastated by his loss, and that of Princess Diana. Nothing is more important than the life of a human being. In the light of this enormous tragedy, Kelly forgives Dodi for all of his past injustices against her.”
In 2008, transcripts of phone calls between Dodi and Fisher were made public via the Royal Courts of Justice, suggesting that Fisher and Dodi were intimate with each other at the same time he was seducing Diana. “You even flew me down to St. Tropez,” Fisher told Fayed, “to sit on a boat while you seduced Diana all day and f—ing me all night.”
In another conversation, Fisher told Fayed: “I don’t understand how one day we’re in love and then … why are you doing this to me?” Fayed began, “Kelly, you went with … ” before Fisher cut him off. “I didn’t go with anyone in a year. Why are you doing this? Because it’s Princess Diana?” Fisher asked. “Will you stop it? We broke up, Kelly,” Fayed said. “You are f—ing crazy,” said Kelly. “We were together the whole time. And you knew it.”
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For more about Princess Diana, read Andrew Morton’s biography, Diana: Her True Story — In Her Words. The New York Times bestseller, which was first published in 1992, is the only authorized biography about Princess Diana. The book, which Diana collaborated on, includes raw and unfiltered quotes from the Princess of Wales about her unhappy marriage to Prince Charles, her relationship with Queen Elizabeth II, her life in the House of Windsor, and her hopes, dreams and fears for her children, Prince William and Prince Harry, before her death in 1997. The biography, which has been described as the “closest we will ever come” to a Princess Diana autobiography, was republished with new material in 2017 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the People’s Princess’s death.
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