The Crown's fifth season sees Elizabeth Debicki - of The Man From Uncle and The Night Manager fame - follow in the foot steps of season four's breakout star Emma Corrin as she takes on the role of Princess Diana. Season five spans the 90s - the controversy surrounding Prince Charles and Princess Diana's split, that revenge dress moment and the Princess of Wales' groundbreaking Panorama interview.
Fans of the show have been on high alert for glimpses of season five being filmed for the past year. Eerily familiar paparazzi shots of Elizabeth wearing red puffer jackets and baseball caps, oversized Ralph Lauren shirts and statement gold earrings and even the infamous leopard print bathing suit have made headlines the world over and for good reason. The time and energy that goes into recreating such globally renowned looks for the small screen can never be underestimated.
Speaking to a group of journalists, The Crown's hair and make-up designer Cate Hall says, 'this phase of Diana's, it's all about that Sam McKnight haircut.' Here Cate refers to the short crop that Diana debuted on the cover of British Vogue in 1990. Sam - now bona fide hair royalty - arrived at a studio in East London to style a 'high profile' personality for British Vogue's cover shoot with photographer Patrick Demarchelier. 'Princess Diana was terribly young at this point,' Mary Greenwell, Diana's longtime friend and make-up artist who also met the Princess for the first time that day told Grazia last year, 'Prince William and Harry were maybe four and two and she hadn't found her stride yet.' Sam convinced Diana to go for the crop and when the pictures dropped they made waves around the world.
READ MORE: Everything You Need To Know About Sam McKnight And His Hairdressing Legacy
'When that cover came out,' says Mary, 'everyone thought wow, she's so beautiful. It gave her the most enormous confidence boost.' 'It's a haircut that says that this is not the same fragile young debutante who was thrust into the limelight,' says Cate, 'this is a woman who is reclaiming that space and saying, hold on a second - I have a voice,' she says, 'I can do this, I can carve my own niche, I'm valuable and I have something to offer.'
Was Elizabeth's Diana transformation as seamless as it appears on-screen? 'That haircut is pretty difficult to pull off in a wig,' explains Cate, 'it involved a lot of very precise dying on top of the wig we had already commissioned.' 'And this is a top-to-toe transformation too,' says Cate, 'Elizabeth needed constant fake tanning to look like the Diana that everyone remembers' - a beauty treatment we're betting Elizabeth hadn't bargained for when she signed on for season five.