The time has come for the world to bid farewell to one of the most acclaimed television dramas of the past decade as The Crown wraps its sixth and final season. For Elizabeth Debicki, the actor whose portrayal of Princess Diana has earned her Emmy, Golden Globe, and SAG nominations, the final season means bringing her beloved character to her tragic end.

Through Season 5, Debicki plays a Diana whose marriage is splintering and who is unable to shake the all-consuming attention of the public, who were not willing to let go of the “People’s Princess” as she leaves behind the British royal family. Season 6’s first four episodes explore a Diana who is looking for breathing room, attempting to enjoy a holiday with her sons and companion Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla) in France and navigate post-Palace life. But she’s unable to escape the frenzied flashbulbs of the paparazzi and a media obsession that leads to both her and Fayed’s deaths.

Diana’s passing, a historical heartbreak that was felt around the world, brings Debicki’s time as the character to a close. The actor now looks back at her time on Peter Morgan’s award-winning series, and the pieces of Diana that will be hard to leave behind as she, too, bids farewell to The Crown.

Benji Wilson: After your terrific performance in Season 5, how did it feel to come back on set for the sixth and final season of The Crown?
Elizabeth Debicki: It felt like coming home. We shot Season 5 for almost a year, and it just felt very natural to be back. There were about four months in between but that went very quickly, and I was always thinking about Season 6.

How did you find coming back to the character?
ED: I did a little refresher course in my brain. But I had been inhabiting it, or it was inhabiting me, for quite a while. It was very quick to come back to, and, actually, a relief. It was an interesting acting experiment for me because I’ve never really come back to shoot something in the second season. Loads of actors do it all the time, but I’ve never had that experience. So, it’s a thrill because there’s a part of your mind that’s testing how much is still there. But it felt like my relationship to the things that I had been actively doing in Season 5 was quite naturally there. It was much less recall; it almost felt more normal to do it than to be normal-person me. [More at Source]