'The Crown' star Emma Corrin calls it a "disservice' not to show Princess Diana's bulimia

Emma Corrin thinks that simply just alluding to the late princess' battle with bulimia in "The Crown" Season 4 would be a mistake. She wanted to portray it openly because it was "symptomatic" of what the late princess was going through at that time of her life.

Diana's fairy tale story turned sour three episodes in Season 4 as she found herself alone and lonely without emotional support. She turned to binge eating sweets and purging them in the toilet afterwards for comfort.

The public is privy to the late princess' eating disorder as she had opened up about it in previous interviews. She said it was because she could not handle the pressure and the secrecy surrounding her marriage to Prince Charles.

Thus, Corrin, who plays Princess Diana in "The Crown" Season 4, thinks it would be a "disservice in some way" to not show the princess' struggle with the disorder. It was an important part of her story and to just gloss over it would be a mistake.

"I realised how symptomatic her bulimia was of everything she was going through at the time, and how it caused a lot of what she was going through at the time. So I thought to just allude to it—or maybe to reference it but not really show it—would be doing her a disservice, or her story a disservice in some way," Corrin told Town & Country.

"I also think that it's just really important that these things are shown on screen—obviously treated in the right way and with trigger warnings and that kind of thing, to be done sensitively—but I think if you can include these things in an honest way, you should," she added.

The 24-year-old English actress recalled that the Season 4 scripts only alluded to Princess Diana's bulimia. At the time, she was already doing a lot of research into the disorder and working with Polly Bennett, a character coach who helped Rami Malek on "Bohemian Rhapsody." She said their research focused on the royal's bulimia, "because it was incredibly central to everything she was going through. It's both symptomatic of something and causes a lot of it as well."

Corrin and Bennett eventually gave their notes to the script team and suggested that "The Crown" Season 4 explore Princess Diana's bulimia. She wanted it to be a " thing that is portrayed," with the scenes embellished to show viewers the "ritualistic power that this thing has over her and her relationship with it."