My pixelated laptop screen suddenly appears illuminated when Emma Corrin comes into frame. It’s past midnight on a chilly August morning when we meet. They’re in a dark studio in an undisclosed location, likely hundreds of kilometres away from my boudoir in Sydney – a space where I’ve been known to binge-watch The Crown; its grand visuals, its posh intonations, Corrin as the late Princess Diana.
Perched on a director’s chair wearing a deliciously constructed Ottolinger blazer which frames their cherubic features and a jet-black ’90s hairstyle, Corrin, for all their accolades and aura of a once-in-a-generation star, is somewhat disarming. When you’re face to face with a nascent Hollywood supernova who’s shared the screen with the likes of Olivia Colman and Harry Styles, it’s often hard to remember that Corrin is still all of just 28 years old; the Emma-Louise from the seaside south-eastern tip of England.
Corrin has largely taken on great literary roles or portrayed historical figures that have earned them Emmys, Golden Globes, Critics’ Choice and Screen Actors Guild awards. Underpinning it all, however, is a deep fascination with character – both the real and the fabricated, yet nonetheless complex. Irrespective of whether they’re embodying a young Lady Spencer on the precipice of becoming Princess Diana or, most recently, Charles Xavier’s evil twin sister Cassandra Nova in Deadpool & Wolverine, Corrin brings the person or page to life with a sharpness and sensitivity.
It’s fitting then, that the actor had an affinity for Wes Anderson’s atmospheric aesthetic from a young age. The American director’s ability to place layered characters in his distinctly symmetrical settings has made him a modern auteur of sorts – and it was his 2004 oceanic release that Corrin quotes as the movie that made them understand the unrestrained quality of the medium of film.
“I remember the first time I watched The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, I was like, ‘Whoa, OK, this is a whole new ballgame,” they recall with fondness. Similar to the Anderson-helmed production, the most recent addition to Corrin’s filmography, Deadpool & Wolverine, includes an acerbic protagonist and multi-dimensional visual elements. Interestingly, the third addition in Marvel’s Deadpool trilogy is completely original for the way it breaks fourth walls, uses satire as a comedic device and acknowledges its pitfalls while pandering to them. Anderson, what do you think?
Corrin smiles when I bring up the ways their film rewrites cinematic rules, nodding in acknowledgement with pride for the instalment set to reap US$1 billion at the box office within a month of opening. In their childhood, however, it wasn’t large action sequences or budding comedies that had the most significant impact on them; rather, it was the shaded and introspective romantic dramas penned by celebrated ’90s screenwriter Nora Ephron.
“It’s not particularly groundbreaking but I grew up watching a lot of [her] movies,” they reminisce. “I feel like the way that she gave life to the female voice in the rom-com space really touched me.”
You can almost picture it: Corrin as a pre-teen, glued to the television watching When Harry Met Sally or Sleepless in Seattle. Their parents or siblings might’ve not even known it at the time, but these core memories were crucial for Corrin in forming their on-screen journey.
“Meg Ryan was one of the reasons I wanted to act! I love the nuance she brought to her characters,” they say.
You can see the parallels between Corrin’s work and influences from their youth. In Deadpool & Wolverine, Corrin is more than a jaded megalomaniac with telepathic abilities. Inspired by the frightening kookiness of Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka and the forthright psychopathy of Christoph Waltz in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Corrin traces a comic book villain that’s hard to dislike.
Elsewhere, in their breakout role as the late People’s Princess, Corrin perfectly balanced the internal discourse of one of the world’s most-watched women with the blatant claustrophobia of operating in a rigid familial structure. On stage, after studying Shakespeare at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, they’ve beguiled crowds and critics in portrayals of both ends of the human experience. Corrin also played a superficial grifter cheating their way through New York’s elite in Anna X – yes, inspired by Anna Delvey – and even nabbed the titular gender-switching time-traveller role in a stage version of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel Orlando.
Now, Corrin is gearing up to star in director Robert Eggers’ new movie Nosferatu, which will release towards the end of the year. The vampire movie is a contemporary take on the 1922 silent German Expressionist film of the same name, and is based on the 19th century gothic novel Dracula. It comes hot on the heels of Corrin’s turn as a Gen-Z Sherlock Holmes-type character named Darby Hart in the recent limited series A Murder At The End Of The World.
“It’s always nice when there’s a real body of research to get your teeth into. I find it a really satisfying endeavour,” Corrin notes of their gravitation towards roles based on existing cultural touchstones. “But also, it’s really nice when there is no map apart from the one on the page,” Corrin says of their role as Hart, the first instance of them playing an entirely original part.
“You create a dialogue between you and your director and other co-stars,” they continue.
“Playing Darby Hart was sort of one of my first experiences of creating a character that had to stretch across seven episodes. That was really such a collaborative effort and it really means that the script is at the helm of the project.”
To Corrin, it’s some of their off-screen imaginative performances that resonate the deepest. Long before stars were method dressing on the red carpet or courting interest through their street style, Corrin and their stylist Harry Lambert revolutionised dressing as a format for experimentation.
As Corrin’s upward trajectory came at a time when they were also publicly revealing their experience as a queer person, fashion seemingly became an arena to tinker and toy with how they were presenting themselves to the world. Oozing with sartorial gumption and inhibition, Corrin arrived at events dressed like a Pierrot clown and, another time, like Evander Berry Wall, a famous New York socialite in the Belle Époque era. They even were photographed as an avant-garde goldfish trapped in a plastic bag. Like a costume is to a superhero, style is to an actor, and Corrin sees clothing as a vessel for curiosity.
“It’s an amazing playground in which to explore yourself and the possibilities of identity,” they answer earnestly. “Fashion encases all those things for me. Clothing, for me, will always be about being comfortable and having fun. When those two things can come together, that’s the most amazing thing.”
Even on a new platform like a fashion runway – Corrin made their first foray into this milieu for Miu Miu’s Fall/Winter 2023 collection presentation in Paris – they were the acme of playing the part; a stiff-nosed, buttoned-up person about town, toting their nappa leather Arcadie bag in the crook of their elbow, while swanning around in bejewelled underwear disguised as micro shorts. Soon after, Corrin’s ability to encapsulate infinite interpretations of the pieces was enshrined in the Italian Maison’s 2023 Holiday campaign.
Corrin’s penchant for studious inspection of people has opened them up to endless parts: a jilted wife (both in season four of The Crown and My Policeman), surprise vocalist on Little Simz’s fourth studio album and unexpected collaborator of some of Australia’s most successful exports, Hugh Jackman and Elizabeth Debicki. In fact, Corrin credits both for shaping the actor they’re becoming.
“The thing about Hugh, particularly with playing Wolverine, is you can just tell that he’s been playing this character for 24 years. It’s so in his bones, it’s so in his DNA,” they note. “There’s a real rawness and realness that comes through when an actor has been playing that character for that amount of time. It was such a privilege to watch.”
Similarly, Corrin felt Debicki’s portrayal of Princess Diana in the fifth and sixth seasons of The Crown was so authentic, albeit miles away from what they had done.
“We decided to give ourselves space when [Elizabeth] was creating her own version of Diana, which was right,” Corrin says.
“The wonderful thing about The Crown is that every few seasons you get a fresh take and a completely original version of this character. Like a rebirth, in a way.”
The latter is something Corrin themselves underwent in 2021 after reintroducing themselves to the world as their most authentic self and identifying as non-binary. They later celebrated this step on their journey to radical self-acceptance by getting a tattoo of a house on a planet after a fundamental reading of the queer essay collection, An Apartment On Uranus.
This outward dedication to their identity is as much a part of the rich tapestry that makes them who they are as their collective starring roles. Corrin hasn’t currently confirmed any projects slated for 2025 and beyond, but whatever they portray next will likely be a world where fiction is buoyed by reality. And like the fine-line tattoo of an angel inked onto their upper thigh – a permanent motif we both share and bonded over – Corrin is spreading their wings, breaking on through to the other side.
This story appeared in GRAZIA International.
READ MORE
Margot Robbie & Jacob Elordi To Star In Emerald Fennell’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ Remake
Emily Blunt Reveals Her Daughters Aren’t A Fan Of Her ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ Character
Don’t Take the Medicine: Why TikTok Beauty Trends are Not the Way to Go