When you hear the name Dodi Fayed, three words tend to come to mind, aside from him being the late boyfriend of the People’s Princess: Egypt. Harrods. Playboy. It’s the latter that initially deterred Egyptian-British actor Khalid Abdalla from playing the role. “I was like, me? You must be crazy! Because I had this image of Hugh Hefner.” Through his research process, Abdalla began to understand quite a different person from the one stamped in our minds. “The key to that was the interviews with his friends, where you began to get this image of a gentle, kind of shy, vulnerable, nice guy who had a very complicated but deeply loving relationship with his father,” he tells GQ, ahead of the release of the four-episode first part of the sixth (and final) season of The Crown.
As Abdalla began piecing together a more thorough understanding of this enigmatic character, he was anxious, unsure of what The Crown showrunner Peter Morgan had in mind for the portrayal of the Harrods heir. Was Dodi just going to be a shadow figure who’s sort of irrelevant, the way he’s been represented in mainstream culture, or is he going to be a figure who we get to know? “Immediately in that meeting, I understood that the plan was to give the Fayed’s an equal place in dignity and treatment like any other member of the royal family or as a family in their own right,” Abdalla says. “From there came the breadth of the sense of responsibility, both to Dodi as a person that has lived, breathed, and died 26 years ago, and to the cultural moment.”
In conversation with GQ, Abdalla breaks down The Crown‘s approximation of Dodi and Diana’s final days, what it means to be misrepresented, and the responsibility that comes with playing this role.
To what extent do you think the real version of Dodi differs from the character you play in the show?
The major question I had to ask myself was did he or did he not have a falling-in-love with Diana? Did they fall in love with each other? My approach to all of that, which I’ve learned from the various different films I’ve done that have political resonance and importance in relation with real life, is that it’s not our job to answer the questions around which there’s a lot of speculation. It’s our job to ask them as intensely as possible.
But doing so while tethering, wherever we can, to what is undeniable. Amongst those undeniable things for me, is the CCTV footage of them at the back of the Ritz. No one really sits there and watches the whole damn thing because why would you? It’s bloody boring, right? But at the end, there is this seven minutes of them, which when you watch second by second, is extraordinary. Diana is holding Dodi’s hand behind her back and they’re gently nuzzled into each other. Their heads touch from time to time, and they’re just very gently caressing. From that, you understand the level of tenderness. No one is close like that without falling in love.
