The third episode of season four of The Crown begins with a trigger warning: “The following episode includes scenes of an eating disorder which some viewers may find troubling. Viewer discretion is advised. Information and resources for those struggling with eating disorders are available at www.wannatalkaboutit.com.”
Those scenes, it turns out, are focused on Emma Corrin’s Princess Diana. She’s suffering from feelings of deep loneliness upon joining the royal family, her husband-to-be is having an affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, she’s all alone at Buckingham Palace, and the media is watching her every move. After any event that disillusions her from the fairy tale she imagined her marriage would be—like when she discovers that Charles called Camilla every day from abroad while he hadn’t bothered to ring his fiancée once—The Crown shows Diana bingeing food and then in the bathroom. The scenes are tough to watch—instead of letting the viewer deduce what was going on, creator Peter Morgan opts to show the painful process of purging in its entirety. In one instance, the camera fixates on Corrin’s heaving, exhausted body, draped across the toilet bowl.
The Crown is known for sensationalising real-life events, even when it borders on uncouth: In season two, for example, the show exaggerated Prince Philip’s involvement in his sister Cecilie’s tragic death. The depiction of Diana’s bulimia, however, is very much rooted in reality.
In 1992, Andrew Morton published his biography on the Princess of Wales, called Diana: Her True Story. It contained explosive details about Diana’s eating disorder—something long rumoured in the press but never covered this extensively. Turns out his source for it all was Diana herself, who, through an intermediary, passed the author confessional tapes: “The bulimia started the week after we got engaged and would take nearly a decade to overcome,” the princess recorded herself saying. “My husband put his hand on my waistline and said: ‘Oh, a bit chubby here, aren’t we?’ and that triggered off something in me—and the Camilla thing.” Elizabeth Emanuel, the designer of Diana’s wedding gown, later revealed in interviews that when they started dress fittings, Diana’s waist measured 26 to 27 inches. By July 1981, it had whittled down to 23.
Reports at the time also suggested that Diana’s deep unhappiness with her relationship served as her major trigger: “Bulimia nervosa, the eating disorder Diana developed within a year of becoming Princess of Wales, was not (as Charles’s friends have suggested) an illness which made a marriage go sour,” wrote Anthony Holden in a 1993 issue of Vanity Fair. “It was an illness caused by a sour marriage.”
Come 1995, Diana didn’t need an intermediary to fight her battles. In an interview with the BBC, interviewer Martin Bashir asked her about it point-blank: “It was subsequently reported that you suffered [from] bulimia. Is that true?”
“Yes, I did,” she replied. “I had bulimia for a number of years. And that's like a secret disease. You inflict it upon yourself because your self-esteem is at a low ebb, and you don't think you're worthy or valuable. You fill your stomach up four or five times a day—some do it more—and it gives you a feeling of comfort. It's like having a pair of arms around you, but it's temporarily, temporary. Then you're disgusted at the bloatedness of your stomach, and then you bring it all up again.”
When asked if she had told anyone in the royal family about it, Diana said she hadn’t. “You have to know that when you have bulimia you're very ashamed of yourself and you hate yourself—and people think you're wasting food—so you don't discuss it with people,” she explained. “The thing about bulimia is your weight always stays the same, whereas with anorexia you visibly shrink. So you can pretend the whole way through. There's no proof.”
Her raw, candid confession sent shockwaves through the world at the time—eating disorders were rarely talked about openly. To have a global superstar do so, on such a stage, challenged a major societal stigma.
“For Princess Diana to speak openly about these behaviours and thoughts really shows her strength and her dedication to helping others because it is likely that most people would never have even known she was fighting an eating disorder,” Dr Kendra Becker, clinical psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Eating Disorder Clinical and Research Program, tells Vogue of Diana’s legacy. “Her example not only de-stigmatises eating disorders themselves but also sets an example for seeking help and addressing the shame around these behaviours, thoughts, and feelings that allow them to persist."
Emma Corrin told Vogue that Diana’s honesty—at the time, an unthinkable act in a family that epitomises the concept of the stiff upper lip—played a major role in how she approached her portrayal of the late princess. “I was very determined that I didn’t want it just to be alluded to—I didn’t want it just to be a flushing of the toilet or her wiping her mouth,” she said. “I wanted you to see her experiencing it because she was so candid about her struggles with the media, which I think was incredibly ahead of her time.” Corrin and the producers worked closely with Beat, a UK nonprofit dedicated to eating-disorder awareness, on the story line to ensure that her scenes accurately captured Diana’s plight without glorifying it. “When it is something that so many people are experiencing,” says Corrin, “it should be properly represented.”
This article is originally featured on Vogue.com
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