-Thank you so much for being back.
I appreciate this. I want to talk "The Crown."
I want to talk about the final season,
the ending of "The Crown."
But first, I want to talk about your debut in New York City,
on stage. You were in a very big play.
-I was. It was my second job.
We'd done it in Sydney first,
with Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert.
It was a play called "The Maids."
-Ooh. -And we did it here for a month
at the Lincoln Center Festival, I think.
Yeah. -Yeah. And you had a very famous
run-in, and I just would like you to tell that story
'cause it made me laugh. It was kind of a surreal moment.
-It's actually sort of like
maybe one of the highlights of my life.
So, I did -- I -- I did the play,
and then, of course -- Well, I didn't know about
doing a play in New York is that all these incredibly
wonderful famous people come back.
We don't do that in Australia. You just go home.
Everyone's like, "Right, done. Off you go."
And so, in New York, like, everybody comes backstage.
One day, I was -- I was sort of, like, making a dash,
trying to put my backpack on, run out the door,
and I sort of collide with Meryl Streep on the staircase.
[ Audience "Oohs" ] [ Whispering ] Meryl Streep.
So -- So, she's standing there,
and I sort of don't know what to do.
I freeze, and she sort of just, like --
I'm not sure if she's touching the floor.
She just kind of like -- like floated towards me.
-Yeah, yeah, she floats, yeah. -And I'm just standing there.
Meryl Streep floats all around, yes.
-It's Meryl Streep.
And I sort of go to dark thinking.
I know she's there for Cate and for Isabelle.
But she comes towards me, and she's so incredibly kind,
and she takes my hand,
and she starts saying all these lovely things.
And at the same time as her sort of saying these things to me,
out comes Cate and out comes Isabelle
from their respective dressing rooms.
And so I'm standing there, and Meryl Streep
is holding my hand up to her chest,
and I'm just standing there with my hand like this.
[ Laughter ]
Like, so there's Meryl Streep,
Cate Blanchett, Isabelle Huppert.
For five minutes, I just stood with my hand up
on this angel person's chest.
And I did not move a muscle. [ Laughter ]
Not a tendon, nothing. Yeah, nothing.
-I just -- And I was trying to have a conversation
and, like, join in. I was just like --
I was like, "Yeah. Oh, yeah."
-Oh, okay, cool, yeah." -But just didn't move, right?
And then -- 'Cause I thought, "The second I move,
she's gonna realize she's holding my hand
for five minutes."
And then, you know, the conversation ended,
and I just -- I sort of just, like, walked away in silence.
And I went back into my dressing room
and just -- I just held my hand like that, like...
[ Laughter ]
-Start crying into it. -I couldn't believe it.
I was like, "What are you doing?"
-She's cool like that. She's like,
"Let me hold your hand. I'm not taking it away.
Hi. How you doing?" Yeah, the greatest.
-Yeah. -Since you were last here,
you got an Emmy nomination
for playing Princess Diana in "The Crown."
Well-deserved, by the way.
You're so good. Congratulations.
How did you find out that you were nominated?
-Well, I was in Australia, and because of the time difference,
the nominations were being announced
while I would have been asleep.
So it was actually a big decision.
I was on vacation with my family,
and it was a big decision. We were like, "Do we --
Do I -- Do I wait up and see,
or do I go to sleep?" Because I thought,
"Well, you know, then if you don't get nominated,
that's a really sad sleep, isn't it?"
-Yes, it actually is. -Yeah, it is.
Yeah, you're just like... -...if you just sleep through
and you wake up, it's like Christmas.
You go, "Oh, great." Yeah. If you find out
there is no Christmas, yeah, I guess it's sad, yeah.
-It's real sad. So I didn't look.
I went to sleep, and then, like,
I was fast asleep in the morning.
My little sister, she -- she, like, snuck into my room,
and she tapped me on my shoulder.
She woke me up and she said, "You got nominated for an Emmy."
-[ Laughing ] Yeah. Come on, that's great, right?
Not only do you have her mannerisms down,
it's honestly, it's almost -- it's bizarre how great you are.
It's so great. But you have her dialect.
Like, the way her -- the way she speaks,
it's very Diana.
did you did you work with a coach?
Is there, like, a -- Is there a word?
Sometimes people say a word, like, to get back into it.
Then you go like like -- if there's a Philly accent,
you go like hoagie. Hoagie.
-What do you do for your Neil Young?
-Ooh. -That's what I want to know.
[ Laughter ] -I just sing --
Just sing the highest note I could possibly sing.
But is there a word or something that you go to or no?
-Yes, there is. Yeah. It's something --
I actually worked really, really hard on it.
Because it felt like a super important thing
to sort of give the audience that,
because it's such an iconic voice
and there's a sense of, like, wanting to do it as best I can.
And I was super disciplined.
Like, it's the only thing in my life
I've ever been incredibly disciplined about,
like, the dialect sessions I did.
And one of the things that we learned from --
on "The Crown" is, we sort of learn from speeches
that the real-life people gave.
Because the dialects are really kind of ==
almost like over-enunciated in their speeches.
So the speech that I learnt from was a speech
that starts with the words, "In the past 12 years..."
Right? -That's it.
-"In the past 12 years..." -Yeah, that's it.
-So I learnt this speech while I was -- I was living
with my sister in her apartment and her boyfriend
and her flatmate and my boyfriend.
And I walked around for about three months
saying, "In the past 12 years..."
Then what happened was, like,
I would like -- I'd be, like, brushing my teeth,
walking the dog, doing the dishes,
"The past 12 years...", and then, like, I would come in,
sometimes I'd walk past someone in the shower,
like my sister's boyfriend, and the shower would be running,
and I would just hear someone going, "In the past 12 years..."
And that was like -- that is, like, the thing.
It is a sound bite, and, actually, I watched it --
I watched these episodes with my sister recently,
and, like, we finished the first episode,
she, like, sat back, and she turned to me
and went, "In the past 12 years..."
-Now it's traumatic. Like, yeah.
This is the last -- This is the final season
of "The Crown." -It is, yeah.
-How'd you feel going into filming this?
-Well, I mean, we knew that it would have
a sort of heaviness to it, a weight to it.
But I think because of that, I sort of leaned in as much
as I could to finding the moments of joy
and happiness and kind of freedom.
And a lot of that was really with --
with the kids who play my boys. They're just ama--
They're amazing actors. -Yeah, I have
the picture of them here. Right here.
-I love them. -Yeah.
This is you at the premiere. Yeah. Fantastic.
-Look at the hair. -Yeah.
Was there anything that you take away from playing
when you play Princess Diana? Like, when you do this for...
-I mean, there's so many things.
I think, after studying the real-life person, I mean,
she -- she was just the most remarkable human being.
And she lived her life with so much love.
She gave so much love to people.
And I think one of the things that breaks people's hearts --
I mean, I'll speak for myself -- is just this sense of, you know,
"Did she ever receive the love that she gave,
you know, in return?"
I think that's the thing that we think about.
But what a -- what a sublime human being she was.
-I want to show everyone a clip.
Here's Elizabeth Debicki in "The Crown."
Take a look.
-Mummy. -Mm.
-Are you going to marry Dodi?
-No. Why?
-Well, all the newspapers are saying you will.
♪♪
-Well, you know better than to believe the papers.
I'm emphatically not going to marry Dodi.
To be honest, I can't wait to come home.
♪♪
-You okay?
♪♪
-I'm okay.
-Whoo! [ Cheers and applause ]
Elizabeth Debicki, everyone!
Part one of the final season of "The Crown"
is streaming now on Netflix.