-It is lovely to meet you. -It's lovely to meet you.
-Thank you for being on the show.
It is Perm Week.
I'm sure you've heard. -And saw.
-Yeah, and saw as well. Have you ever had a perm?
I think you may -- Can I guess?
I think you might have had one.
-I...
I've had a perm.
-You have? -Yeah.
-You're allowed to talk about it.
-It's slightly traumatic.
-It is? -It is.
Well, so...
I can't even believe I'm actually --
I've never really told anyone this story, but I...
I was, a few years ago, going through a very bad breakup.
I'm telling this story because what I would like to do
is sort of start a form of activism against hairdressers
allowing to do perms on people who are going through a breakup.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ] -It's real!
-It's a real thing. -It's so real.
-They should ask you before they give you the --
-I think I think there should be a law that if you sit --
-A law? -A law, yes.
You pass loads of laws in this country.
-Yes, we do. Yes. We try.
-So if you sit down in a chair in a hair salon and you say,
"Hello, I would like a perm," the person has to say,
"Are you going through a terrible breakup?"
And if you say yes, they can't --
-They ask for you to leave.
-They say, "We can give you a trim."
[ Laughter ]
-So what exactly went down?
So you went in, bad breakup.
--I went in and I was very, very sad.
And I think I'd seen, like, a magazine cover
and someone looking gorgeous, and I'd said to the hairdresser
who was doing my hair for an event,
"God, she looks so good. What has she done?"
And I think this hairdresser said,
"Oh, she's had a perm."
And I went, oh my God.
That's going to solve all of my problems.
So I went, and then she said, which shall not be named.
She said, "Go to this salon. They're doing perms."
[Clicks tongue] "They're doing a perm."
And I was like, "Great, I'll go."
So then I went and got in the chair
and I got this perm,
which is a very extensive process.
It's like, 6 hours of regret.
You just sit there and you're like,
"This is just so bad."
-And then you're at the point of no return,
at one point, and you go, "I'm getting a perm."
-There's so many points of no return.
-Many points of no return.
-But my hair was, you know, it was like straw, short.
I mean, it was already kind of snappy
and it was so bad.
-It was rough? -It was so rough.
Anyway, here's the real clincher for me,
is that my hair didn't do the perm-y thing.
So they took the thing --
Chris looked amazing, right? -Of course. Yes.
-Yes, Chris looks great.
-So then when they took the thing,
the little twizzler thingies out,
it was just like the saddest, most, like, wilted little thing.
-So did you look like an extra for,
the girl from "The Ring" or something?
What did you look like?
-I don't even --
I looked like when I was in primary school
and I thought, "I know, I'm going to sleep in curlers."
-Oh, my God. -It was so bad.
And then I remember,
I walked out of the hair salon and my phone rang,
and it was my publicist, my amazing publicist, Lisa.
And I pick it up and she goes,
"Oh, hi, honey. How are you?"
And I said, "Lisa, I just got a perm."
And then there was this, like, 15-second pause.
And then she just said,
"Oh, honey, why?"
[ Laughter ]
It was so bad!
-That's a great response.
"Oh, honey, why?" -"Oh, honey, why?"
The pain in her voice.
And I knew she was thinking, "When is she ever in public,
like, in the next 5 to 6 months?"
-Yeah, because you have to just throw it out.
You don't have an option. -Cancel, cancel.
-You have to shave all your hair off, yeah.
I got to say, you are phenomenal in "The Crown."
Congratulations on all the accolades.
[ Applause ]
Golden Globe, you're nominated for two SAG Awards coming up.
Congratulations on this.
Do you enjoy going to these awards shows?
I do enjoy them, but I get very nervous
in rooms full of -- yeah.
Well, there's like, so many famous people.
It's kind of strange, you know?
And I've never been to the Golden Globes before.
I took my little sister,
who is a trooper and a very calm person.
But we were super, super jet-lagged.
We'd just got in. -Yeah.
-And the next day we were thinking about it,
because we didn't -- I didn't really meet
that many people, and I was thinking,
what was I doing?
And then I realized that we basically were like,
treating it like we were in a Jane Austen novel.
We didn't get up once,
and everyone just walked past our table.
We sort of went, "Thank you for coming."
[ Laughter ]
And I got a text from a friend who was watching,
like, on the television, and she just said,
"Get up and say hi to someone."
-"Say hi to someone."
Did you ever see yourself or think like,
"Oh, maybe one day, I could play Princess Diana?"
-No, no. [ Laughter ]
No, I never. No.
I never saw a resemblance, really, no.
-Well, let me show everyone a picture.
This is you as Princess Diana
and then the real Princess Diana.
[ Applause ]
I mean, it's kind of insane. It's unbelievable.
That's fantastic. -Yeah.
-So you go into the audition.
Did you know that you were auditioning for Diana?
-So it's a weird story.
I knew in a kind of vague way that I was going to play
this part for a very -- like, five years.
So I went in and I did an audition for a part in season 2
-Of "The Crown"? -Of "The Crown."
Season 1 had just come out and it was a really big hit,
and everyone was, rightly so, very excited.
My agent called me up and said, "Just go in," and basically,
I was so physically wrong for this part.
I'll never tell anyone what it is.
-Okay. -So people's imaginations.
-Does the character have a perm?
[ Laughter ]
So I went and I did this pretty bad audition.
You know, they kind of stopped me and they were like,
"We'll call you. Thank you so much," you know?
-Oh, that is the worst. -Brutal.
So then I left, and then I got an email,
this sort of ambiguous email, the next day saying,
"Definitely not that part, but maybe Diana."
But it was about, you know,
it was like, five years in the pipeline.
-So that means you have to wait five years for them
to remember that you auditioned.
-I didn't really think it was going to happen.
-Yeah, usually it doesn't happen, to be honest.
-That's the thing.
And then when I bring this up with the producers and I say,
you know, it was like five years of hell,
where I was like,
"Please, God, let this come along."
They all say, "Oh, no. We always knew it would be you."
And I think, we? Like, we? What we? Royal we?
-Me, I did not. -No, no.
-You are phenomenal in this.
I want everyone to watch "The Crown."
I want to show a clip right now.
Here's Elizabeth Debicki in "The Crown." Take a look.
-What's this about us going home?
-It turns out there's
a diary conflict through no fault of mine,
and I have to get back.
-We're supposed to be here for two weeks.
-Yes, I know.
Plans change.
I have a commitment at Oxford University.
-It isn't the university.
It's a summer school for tourists.
It's not essential.
-It is to me.
-This is our holiday.
It's a rare opportunity for us to be together
with the boys as a family.
And I know you struggle with that sort of thing,
which is why I agreed to you bringing your friends
along to entertain you.
And I even agreed to do the photo call today
requested by your people so the lie could be
paraded to the world's media
about what an adoring husband you are.
On one condition. -What's that?
-That you actually are one!
-Ooh! Elizabeth Debicki!
All seasons of "The Crown" available now on Netflix.
More "Tonight Show" after the break, everyone.
Stick around. Make that a law!