Princess Diana Will Make You Cringe in This The Crown Deleted Scene
The Crown season 4 is all about Princess Diana, starting with the moment the then 16-year-old first meets Prince Charles while dressed up as a tree for a school play. It’s one of the only moments in which at least one party isn’t miserable; practically the entire rest of the season falls along the lines of Diana’s spectacular failure at gift-giving, just proving how little the late royal, portrayed by breakout star Emma Corrin, knows her husband. That’s more evident than ever in the deleted scene that Netflix dropped on Monday, a full eight months after the season’s premiere.
The four-minute clip begins with the Emmy nominee as Diana laying in bed, looking morose until she pops a VHS tape into the TV and cracks a small smile. It’s the exact opposite reaction that Charles had to the moment she’s watching: her performance of “All I Ask of You” from The Phantom of the Opera, which was only partially featured in episode 9. Diana is on yet another failed mission to salvage her relationship with Charles when, in the middle of celebrating his birthday with a night at the theater, she surprises him by appearing onstage. Even the audience seems taken aback (if not somewhat mortified) when Diana, wearing a frankly ridiculous ensemble, steps into the spotlight and lowers the hood of her frilly floor-length cape. And then, backed by a full orchestra, she bursts into song. Onlookers are clearly amused by the time fake snow starts to fall and the stage fills with fog.
It’s not that Diana’s voice is bad, and there’s no denying that she’s making a truly genuine effort. Even just from the short clip that ended up in the episode, though, the secondhand embarrassment is real. Charles has already made it clear he loathed her last public gift—a dance set to the tune of Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl”—and this time, he’s utterly appalled, later describing it as “monstrous.” He seems to have made as much clear to Diana by the time she tunes in, because she’s back to looking full-on hopeless by the time the tape ends, switching the TV to static. Her reaction to what ended up being her complete failure is almost heartbreaking.
To make matters worse, it turns out the late Diana actually delivered the same performance in real life. Luckily, you won’t have to live through it again in the next Diana biopic—not that Spencer, starring a döppelganger-like Kristen Stewart, will be any cheerier. The upcoming film will depict the weekend in 1991 that Diana decided it was time for her and Charles to end their marriage.
