'The Crown' star Emma Corrin explains why Diana's bulimia has to be portrayed honestly (exclusive)

Watch: The Crown star Emma Corrin discusses the importance of portraying Diana honestly

Emma Corrin makes her debut as Princess Diana in the fourth season of Netflix’s The Crown, which portrays her relationship with Prince Charles, including their wedding in 1981, and the birth of their two sons: William and Harry.

It also shows Diana’s struggles with eating disorders in an unflinching way, something that the 24-year-old actor felt was important to show.

“I knew [Diana’s bulimia] was going to be included [in the new season],” Corrin shared at a recent press conference for Peter Morgan’s Netflix series, “and I said, very early on, that if it was going to be included, I would like to show it properly, and not have it alluded to.”

Read more: First look at Margaret Thatcher in 'The Crown' S4

Talking to Yahoo, Corrin says this was very important to her as she thinks eating disorders should be discussed openly.

“When you’re depicting anything like that in TV or film on screen,” Corrin explains in our video interview above, “when it is something that affects so many people, and is an intensely personal and private experience, that it is represented in the right way, that does it justice.”

Diana, who died in 1997, struggled with an eating disorder until seeking treatment for it in the late 1980s. It was revealed to the public in Andrew Morton’s 1992 book Diana: Her True Story, and in her 1995 BBC interview she told Martin Bashir that a lack of self-esteem had contributed to the battle: "I had bulimia for a number of years, and that’s like a secret disease.

“It’s a repetitive pattern which is very destructive. It was my escape mechanism."

The princess added that bulimia was a “symptom of what was going on in my marriage.”

Remarkably, after Diana spoke about her bulimia, the rates of women seeking treatment for the disorder more than doubled in Britain.

“I never wanted [bulimia] to be address flippantly,” Corrin continues, “I never wanted it just to be referenced, I really wanted to do the work and speak to people who had experienced it and do the research, so that I felt like I could accurately portray it.”

Watch: The Crown S4 teaser

Talk in confidence to an adviser from the eating disorders charity Beat by calling their adult helpline on 0808 801 0677 or youth helpline on 0808 801 0711.

The fourth season of The Crown will be on Netflix from 15 November.