Elizabeth Debicki at the SAG Awards 2024.Photo:Netflix
Netflix
The Crown’sElizabeth Debickihas been crowned once again!
After she made her way to the stage, Debicki started her speech with an honest — and relatable — confession: “I don’t have any shoes on.”
“Truly, I was not expecting this. People say that and I really am not. So I don’t really know what to say, so I’m just going to wing it,” she continued, before thanking SAG-AFTRA and her fellow nominees. “The women in my category, I watch with total awe and I learn how to do my craft watching you. So being nominated next to you is incredible.”
Debicki recalled her early acting beginnings, saying, “I really, really love my job. About a week ago, I had the flu and I was, this is what happens when I improv. I was lying in bed. And I had a memory of, I was thinking about childhood. And I was thinking about a happy memory and I remembered the first time that I was ever cast in a play. And it was in my year, I was year five, I must have been 10. I think someone’s parent wrote it. I think it was about kids getting along, like, I don’t think it was an actual play. Somebody gave me that part on the last day of school and it was a 15-minute walk home and I think I just I levitated home, I was so happy. And I feel like that every time someone gives me a job. So thank you for this. It means so much to me.”
Concluding her speech, Debicki gave a sweet shoutout to her costars onThe Crown,as well as her mom, whose birthday was also on Saturday.
“To my beautifulCrownfamily and so many of you here tonight. It is a joy to work with you,” she said. “This job is such a gift. It’s my mum’s birthday. Happy birthday, Mum, thank you so much.”
Elizabeth Debicki in ‘The Crown’.Des Willie/Netflix
Des Willie/Netflix
Debicki, 33, portrayedPrincess Dianaon the final two seasons ofThe Crown, which focused on the royal’s final days before her fatal car crash in August 1997.
The actress told PEOPLE thatthe weight of playing Dianafor the Netflix series was not lost on her, sharing, “I did a lot of research for this role. I probably spent about a year doing research and that just filled in all these pieces and made me have such deep, deep respect and love for this person who I didn’t know so much about.”
She continued, “The battle that she went through in terms of media, public perception. I didn’t know things about the divorce and how difficult all of that was for everybody in the family.”
Debicki was in good company as fellow actresses Aniston, Ramsey, Russell and Snook were also up for the coveted prize.
Aniston — who is no stranger to public scrutiny in her everyday life — said that playing a famous figure in the series was a “cathartic” experience.
“Also interesting for me to look at how I always have tried to normalize being fine and ‘everything’s great, you know, this is all normal,’ and then there are moments when you have your private breakdown or your ‘Calgon, take me away’ moments,” Aniston said. “To actually look at it from an actor brain observing it and acknowledging it, I had to look at it as opposed to pretending it doesn’t exist.”
Bella Ramsey on “The Last of Us”.Liane Hentscher/HBO
Ramsey, 20, stars as Ellie Williams, a teenager who is immune to the fungus that has turned the world into a post-apocalyptic landscape filled with “infected” onThe Last of Us. Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal) is a smuggler on a journey to deliver Ellie to a rebel group in the hope that her immunity can save civilization.
Ramsey — who identifies as non-binary anduses they/them pronouns— ended up getting so into character that it became hard to distinguish where Ellie stopped and their real self started.
“People always ask, at the end of a shoot day, how I get back into being Bella,” they toldThe New York Times. “But I didn’t know how to do that with Ellie because we were so intertwined.”
Keri Russell on “The Diplomat”.Courtesy of Netflix
Courtesy of Netflix
In the first season ofThe Diplomat, Russell starred as Kate Wyler, the new U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom who was forced to navigated the demands of both her job and marriage.
“What I loved is the constant discomfort and sweatiness and nervousness and just overall unpolished quality of her — matched with the bossiness to everyone, which I think is really funny,” Russell, 47, toldTudumof taking on the role of Kate.
However, she did wish that Kate wasn’t so talkative, saying, “And the thing I don’t like is how much she has to say. I would love to not ever have to speak. I could just mime my scenes.”
Sarah Snook on “Succession”.Peter Kramer/HBO
Peter Kramer/HBO
Snook, 36, returned as Siobhan “Shiv” Roy for the final season ofSuccession, which sawthe death of Logan Roy(Brian Cox) leaving the fate of the Roy family and the ownership of Waystar Royco in limbo. The series concluded with Shiv’s husband Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) becoming the company’s new CEO.
She concluded, “I just watched the final episode of the final season of something that has changed my life. And now, my life has changed again. Thank you for all the love and support.”
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SeePEOPLE’s full coverageof the 30th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards as they stream live on Netflix.
source: people.com
