TV bride Diana – and a gown fit for The Crown

HANDS folded and eyes cast shyly to the side, the resemblance of The Crown actress Emma Corrin to Princess Diana is extraordinary – just as are the similarities between their dresses.

Like that of the late Princess of Wales, the outfit in this photo from the forthcoming fourth season of the hit Netflix drama has a 25ft train.

Ten people were required to help Ms Corrin put it on, an intricate and timeconsuming process that results in just a 15-second glimpse on screen.

Months of painstaking work went into ensuring that every detail was true to life.

David and Elizabeth Emanuel, who designed the original gown, donated patterns and costume designer Sidonie Roberts travelled to P aris to buy buttons from a shop that the

Queen’s dressmaker uses, choosing from a collection of over 30,000.

The material was bought from a Bangladeshi fabric shop in London’s Brick Lane for £3.50 a metre and it took a day and a half for an assistant to glue tiny pearls on the shoes.

Ms Corrin said she hoped to do the Princess ‘proud’, telling The Sunday Times Magazine: ‘I know that’s strange and cheesy, but I feel like I know her.’

The series is unsparing in its account of Diana’s marital woes and battle with an eating disorder . One scene sees her gorging on puddings and vomiting them back up after she discovers Prince Charles’s affair with Camilla Parker Bowles. T o prepare, the 24year-old actress listened to real-life accounts from bulimia sufferers.

Josh O’Connor, who plays the Prince of Wales, was shocked by Charles’s behaviour when he read the script, but now has ‘sympathy’ for him. ‘This is a family who have an intense inability to be emotional and he has inherited that awkwardness,’ he said.

The show’s creator , Peter Morgan, also lays to rest rumours that he regularly talks to courtiers about details of the series. ‘I have never had any discussions with anyone actively working at the P alace,’ he said. ‘The two worlds, the Royal Household and The Crown, exist in a world of mutual deniability, which I’m sure is every bit as important to them as it is to us.’

The new series is available from November 15.