5 Princess Diana Moments From The Crown Season 6 Trailer That Made Us Do A Double Take
Fans have been waiting for a year for Season 6 of Netflix's "The Crown," and the excitement and anticipation for the final season of the award-winning show is kicking into high gear as Netflix has dropped the first full trailer for the season. And from the trailer, it seems like the focus for the first part is very much going to be on the last days of Diana's life and the aftermath for the royal family.
Each season of "The Crown" has brought us closer to the modern day. Many of the scandals and dramatic moments in the first couple of seasons were far enough in the past that not as many people could remember those same incidents happening in real life, like the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. However, by Season 6, we're very much into the realm of what people can remember seeing in the news; it's set to portray events from 1997 to 2005, and along with Princess Diana's death, season 6 of "The Crown" will include the start of Prince William and Kate Middleton's love story.
For any royal fan, there are a number of distinctly recognizable moments from Diana's life in Netflix's trailer for Season 6. These are the ones that stood out to us the most.
Diana leaving the Ritz and being chased by paparazzi
Anyone who has followed the recent history of the royal family knows that Princess Diana and her partner Dodi Fayed died in a car accident in Paris on August 31, 1997, after being chased by paparazzi. The Netflix trailer for Season 6 of "The Crown" takes us close to the final moments of Princess Diana's life. There's a quick moment in the trailer that shows chaos and crowds surrounding Princess Diana as she's exiting a building.
The paparazzi images of Princess Diana in Paris on that fateful night were broadcast around the world as was the CCTV hotel footage. So as you see her black top and jacket with gold earrings and, of course, the overwhelming flash from cameras, it's a definite ah-ha moment of, "Oh, that's Diana on the last night of her life."
Then, they show the black Mercedes-Benz that Diana and Fayed, along with a bodyguard, were riding in being chased by paparazzi on motorcycles. And while there aren't images of the paparazzi chasing Diana on that night in Paris, that is such a well-known part of the story. So much so, that even though you know what's going to happen, that it's been over 25 years, and that they won't be showing the actual accident in the trailer, it makes you catch your breath.
Diana's Virgin Atlantic sweater was used to foil paparazzi
From her wedding dress to her revenge dress, Princess Diana had any number of iconic fashion moments. With the intense public fascination with Diana, even her appearance as she was just going to the gym was of interest.
Princess Diana knew that, and one of the ways that she seemed to enjoy trolling paparazzi was to wear the same outfit when she went to the gym — a "Fly Virgin Atlantic" sweatshirt. Since she wore it so often, it made the pictures of her look the same, which in turn would decrease their value. Pretty smart! It was also a trend-setting piece in a way; she was wearing athleisure years before the trend fully took hold.
We see the iconic sweatshirt for just a moment in the trailer for Netflix's "The Crown." She seems to be wearing it as she's rushing to board an aircraft of some kind. But it's definitely the same Virgin Atlantic sweatshirt that she received as a gift directly from Sir Richard Branson, Diana's friend and owner/founder of Virgin Atlantic. She later gifted the sweatshirt to her personal trainer, and it sold at auction to an anonymous bidder for $53,532 in 2019.
The headline that announced Diana's new relationship to the world
One of the most notable headlines that surrounded Princess Diana in the weeks before her death was one on August 10, 1997, in the "Sunday Mirror" that read simply "The Kiss." The front page was primarily a grainy photo of Diana and Dodi Fayed caught in a kiss, and it was sold for a reported £1 million. In the Season 6 trailer for "The Crown," that newspaper with its sensational headline is being shown to an unhappy Queen Elizabeth, played by Imelda Staunton. The newspaper's subheadline also fueled rumors of a potential engagement, even though Diana and Fayed hadn't been dating long.
What's perhaps most notable about that picture, and why we just knew it had to make it into "The Crown," is that it was the one that made Diana and Fayed's relationship public. That, in turn, likely fueled the frenzy for getting additional photos of the two together. If you could get a million pounds from capturing a photo of the princess and her new beau, that's a pretty good payout.
As for how it impacted the royal family, in the trailer, the newspaper headline seems to be emphasizing to the queen that there's going to be an ongoing public interest in Princess Diana, even though she had been divorced from then-Prince Charles for nearly a year, and that would be a problem to be managed.
Diana's memorable moment sitting alone on a diving board
The trailer starts with a voiceover by Princess Diana, played by Elizabeth Debicki, in which she says: "I don't really understand how I ended up here. Dashing around, losing sight of myself in the process. You know I think that's been the story of my whole life." One of the first images in the trailer is of Diana sitting on the end of a diving board in a teal one-piece bathing suit with a photographer's lens seemingly trained on her.
The diving board moment was very much captured on film in real life. Paparazzi were tracking her on her vacation with Dodi Fayed; the couple were spending time together in Portofino, Italy, on his father's luxury yacht called Jonikal, and photos of Diana and Fayed together on that vacation were worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.
The trailer for "The Crown" managed to make Diana look both very much alone on the end of that diving board in the middle of the ocean and very much not alone as photographers can get to her even there. Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, Diana and Dodi Fayed would die about a week after those photos were taken, making the images even more heart-rending.
Diana walked through an active landmine field
Princess Diana had been separated from then-Prince Charles since 1992, though their divorce wasn't finalized until August 1996. Even during her separation, though, Diana kept up with her charity and advocacy work — and as her private life sold newspapers, so did her humanitarian work.
In a famous image, Diana wore protective gear to walk through an active minefield in Angola in January 1997. In doing so, she was able to help bring attention to the danger of landmines. It was a move that was deemed by some at the time to be too political for a member of the royal family and one that was invaluable to creating an international landmine ban treaty.
"The Crown" has a glimpse of this historic moment in the trailer, confirming that the show won't entirely be focused on Diana's death. Instead, it will include some of the moments that helped cement Diana's legacy of helping the world when she could by using the public's interest in her and directing it toward causes she was passionate about.
The images of Diana walking through a minefield still resonate decades later as her son Prince Harry followed in her footsteps in 2022. So while the moment in "The Crown" is about Diana, the parallels seem clear between mother and son, as both are doing humanitarian work while being on the outs with the royal family.