The Crown: Why season 4 doesn’t show Prince Charles and Diana’s wedding

Event drew an audience of 750 million people in 1981

As fans of The Crown get stuck into the highly anticipated fourth season, by now they may have realised that the show has avoided showing a major milestone for the royal family.

Early photos and teasers revealed that Princess Diana would play a major role in the latest season of the hit Netflix show.

However, the series does not include the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, an event which drew 750 million viewers around the world.

Emma Corrin, who plays the young Lady Diana in season four, told The Hollywood Reporter that there is a simple reason for this.

“We never re-create things just for the sake of re-creating them,” she explained. “I think if we do re-create a scene – like the engagement scene, for instance, when they do the announcement – it has to be because it's linked to something that the characters are going through. It has to be part of the story.”

She pointed out that, with the wedding scene, “you can YouTube it and you could be watching it in 10 seconds, so I don’t think there’d be any point in us re-creating it”.

Josh O’Connor, who has played Prince Charles since season three, agreed with Corrin and said the decision was part of what makes The Crown “so good”.

“Peter Morgan isn't interested in showing you the wedding because, yeah, Emma's right, you just go on YouTube and you can watch it,” he said.

“I think all the historical events are important for punctuating so that the audience know where we are,” he added.

“[Morgan] basically signposts it using historical events. But what's more interesting, because Charles and Diana have to be a certain way on their wedding day, you don't see the nuance; whereas when it's behind closed doors, [like] the rehearsal, we have more license to create and fictionalise.”

While fans may be disappointed that they won’t get to see how The Crown would have portrayed the wedding, they do see a glimpse of Corrin wearing a version of Princess Diana’s iconic wedding dress.

“It took so many fittings just to make it, which was an experience. I'm so bad at fittings. I think everyone hated me by the end,” Corrin said. “But it was amazing to see the dress come to life around me. It was very magical and it kind of felt like Cinderella when they're waving the wand and she's being turned into this incredible princess. It was it was an amazing moment, and then to film it as well was very surreal.”

The fourth series of The Crown also explores the couple’s first meeting, Diana’s introduction to the family, subsequent marriage to Prince Charles and her rise to global fame and scrutiny.

Emma Corrin as Princess Diana and Josh O’Connor as Prince Charles in season 4 of ‘The Crown’ (Des Willie/Netflix)

It has received mostly positive reviews from critics, with praise singled out for Corrin’s performance as Princess Diana, as well as for Gillian Anderson, who stars as prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

“Morgan verges on writing Diana as manipulative and celebrity-hungry but stops just shy. We see her receiving her first taste of fame as her relationship with Prince Charles is made public and discovering she enjoys the spotlight,” The Independent review observed.

“At the same time, she is easily overawed by Charles’s true love Camilla (Emerald Fennell), who haunts the marriage. And Morgan doesn’t hold back from Diana’s struggles with bulimia. Ultimately, The Crown leaves it to the viewer to decide whether she is a victim of the frosty and dysfunctional royal “Firm” or architect of her unhappiness.”

Read the full review here.

The Crown is available to stream on Netflix now.