Crowning glory for royal tour
Iconic Australian locations recreated with digital trickery
THE new season of The Crown has devoted an entire episode to Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s famous tour of Australia in 1983 — and made it without even setting foot in the country.
Instead of making along and expensive trip Down Under, producers of the award-winning drama used parts of England and Spain as substitutes for key Australian locations featured in the wildly successful six-week royal tour.
The port city of Ma lag a was used for city footage such as their visit to Sydney, and the desert regions around Almeria—assisted by some clever digital trickery and Aussie-accented extras — stood in for the pair’s famous trip to Uluru, while other scenes were shot in London’s Australia House.
Emma Corrin, who plays Diana opposite Josh O’Connor’s Charles, said she was devastated not to visit the country for real, but said the pair pored over video footage of the real trip to make sure they got it right.
“For the Australia tour it was really useful ,” C orrin said.
“We’d pitch up somewhere in Ma lag a to do a scene and the director would bring along a laptop and we’d watch their version, not to repeat what they had done, but to get a flavour of the environment.
“Out there in Almeria, in the desert, is where they used to do the spaghetti westerns, and it’s an incredible landscape.
“I haven’t actually been to Australia, but you did feel you could be somewhere like that .”
Princess Diana said at the time that the high-stakes trip was “make or break time” for her, and it was so important to the royal family that it was inevitable it would feature in the fourth season of The Crown, which covers the late 1970s and ’80 s. It drop son Netflixn ext Friday.
It was the 22-year-old Diana’s first overseas trip with her husband of two years, and their relationship was already struggling.
She broke with royal protocol by insisting on bringing baby William along, and it came at a time when new Australian prime minister Bob Hawke was hoping the country would become are public in the next five years.
The production also flew Richard R ox burgh to Spain and London to rep rise his award-winning role as Hawke for scenes with O’Connor, Corrin and Oscar-winner Olivia Colman, who plays Queen Elizabeth II.