The Crown nominees Emma Corrin and Josh O'Connor on their most 'outlandish' rehearsal

To no one's surprise at all, season 4 of Netflix's The Crown racked up 24 Emmy nominations this morning, including Outstanding Drama Series. Emma Corrin and Josh O'Connor also earned nods for their standout performances as Princess Diana and Prince Charles, respectively.

It's already been a busy but unusual awards season for the duo, who each won Golden Globes in January for their work in The Crown. "It's been really strange, like, doing this all on the other end of a laptop in your apartment, when you really want to be there with all these other people who made it possible," Corrin tells EW's The Awardist podcast this week.

Though Charles and Diana have several emotional moments together over the course of their volatile marriage, the actors say one of their most intense rehearsal experiences was for a scene that O'Connor isn't even in. Episode 3, "Fairytale," features a very tense lunch between the newly-engaged Diana and Camilla Parker Bowles, Charles' mistress and true love played by Emerald Fennell. During rehearsals for the scene, director Benjamin Caron asked O'Connor to sit silently at the table between Corrin and Fennell as they ran their lines.

"They brought loads of [Marks & Spencer] desserts that we had to, like, feed each other," Corrin tells The Awardist. "Josh was there, and the game was that whoever felt they had the power at that moment during the scene had to take Josh's hand. And you could let it go when you felt like you'd lost the power." Says O'Connor with a laugh, "I really didn't know how to be. I was like, 'Am I the ghost of Charles? Am I here? Or am I Josh? I don't know what I'm doing. Can I eat some of these desserts? Because they look delicious.'"

To hear more from the Crown stars — including the one moment during filming that had O'Connor "close to cracking" — and to get early analysis of today's Emmy nominations, listen to the full episode below.

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