Elizabeth Debicki didn’t think she could play Princess Diana

She nearly abdicated her television throne.

Elizabeth Debicki took on a huge role as Princess Diana in “The Crown” — but she admits the thought of it made her nervous.

“I think in the very beginning that did overwhelm me, the idea of this kind of collective [of Diana disciples] out there,” the 32-year-old actress told British Vogue.

“It’s a trap, right? A swampy quagmire. So, I would stand over the kitchen sink and say, ‘I cannot do this,’” she continued.

But once scripts started to arrive and the actress started to get into the role, she realized it wasn’t so bad.

“This isn’t meta. These are characters,” she went on, reflecting on her thought process. “It’s a part.”

Though Debicki looks just like the late Princess Diana in photos from the upcoming fifth season of the Netflix show, she says she “can’t see” a physical resemblance. But everyone agreed she was fit for the role of the princess once she put on the wig and kohl eyeliner.

“The Crown” has faced a lot of criticism for false portrayals of the royal family. Recently, former British Prime Minister John Major blasted the show for its inaccuracies, calling it “damaging and malicious fiction.” A source close to the royal family also slammed the series for its “deliberately cruel” and “unnecessarily unsympathetic” portrayal of Penny Knatchbull, Countess Mountbatten of Burma.

Even Dame Judi Dench chimed in with her opinion, penning a letter to the Times of London claiming the newest season of “The Crown” will be an “inaccurate and hurtful account of history.”

But Debicki has no opinions of her own on the royal family and doesn’t follow royal news at all, which she believes is an “advantage.”

When asked if she personally knows any of the royals, she laughed and said, “No. Maybe I never will now. Prince Harry seems fun.”

Debicki believes that portraying a royal on the show gives her a pretty good insight into what it’s really like.

“But anyone who works on the show has a sense of how extremely difficult it is to be born into that [life],” she said.

“The rules are sort of decided for you as well: less is more. Although, of course, Diana broke that rule. She broke the fourth wall, reaped the benefits, but the consequences came hard and heavy.”

Princess Diana died at age 36 in 1997 from injuries sustained in a car accident in Paris’ Pont de l’Alma tunnel that occurred while the vehicle was being chased by paparazzi. Her death shocked the world and left it in mourning, and it’s still considered a sensitive subject.

The filming of her death has been a point of controversy for “The Crown,” with sources saying the depiction is “very uncomfortable.” A different source told Deadline that the actual car crash won’t be shown on-screen, but the events before and after will.

Debicki also shared how much “pressure” it was to wear Princess Di’s infamous “revenge dress.”

Diana wore a black, off-the-shoulder Christina Stambolian dress for a dinner at London’s Serpentine Gallery in 1994 the same night then-Prince Charles gave an interview about his infidelity.

“I let the fittings happen around me while I thought about what the dress meant,” Debicki said. “She was claiming the space. The way she walked out of that car, the luminosity, the strength of her as that car door opened, she was so fast and so forward. It’s an extraordinary thing to watch. To decide what you’re saying about yourself through fashion … it was a currency. An incredibly powerful currency.”

Despite all the jitters, Debicki has considered playing Princess Diana to be an honor.  

“I will say it’s a huge gift to learn what I’ve learned about this person. In so many ways, it’s a story of immense transformation — and triumph too. The public got to watch her evolve into an incredibly strong woman, trying to control a narrative that was the slipperiest thing ever.”

Season 5 of “The Crown” premieres Nov. 9 on Netflix.