How I Travel: Emma Corrin on Filming ‘The Crown’ in Spain and Scotland

Even actors starring in highly anticipated prestige television shows have gone a little stir-crazy in the pandemic. Amid the many horrors of 2020, Emma Corrin, who stars as the young Princess Diana in the new season of The Crown, admits missing “the freedom, the choice” to travel. “I mean, I've been very busy anyway, so would I have had the chance to travel?” she says. “Probably not. But it's weird having a choice removed from me—that you can't get out. It makes you feel very claustrophobic.”

Luckily, filming The Crown last year took the 24-year-old English actor on set to Scotland and Spain, and viewers can travel along with her when the show returns to Netflix on November 15. Corrin chatted with Condé Nast Traveler about spending time with family in South Africa, her favorite water sport, and the lengths she’s gone to escape London for a little getaway.

Where she’s spent the pandemic:

I've been at home in London. I live next to Hampstead Heath, which has been a massive blessing because it's gorgeous and a good place to be when you can't really go anywhere else. It gives you that sense you're not really in London, which is a lovely feeling.

The coolest locations she visited while filming this season:

We started off in the Highlands of Scotland, [which] I'd actually never been to before. Some of the landscapes we were filming in were breathtaking. We were in the Cairngorms—you could see for miles, and it was stunning. I've been trying to go back up. Weirdly, I think Scotland's quite difficult to get to when you’re in the U.K. It always seemed like quite of a mission where actually it shouldn't be. Then Spain was our second location. We were in Almería, which is where they filmed the spaghetti westerns, which is beautiful, and then we were in Málaga, which is where we filmed all the rest of the scenes. We were in Málaga for about a month, which was amazing.

What she wears to fly:

You know how you end up feeling so grim on a flight, or after a flight? I feel if you're in a tracksuit, you kind of end up getting more grim, do you know what I mean? I tend to mix it up so I try and wear a really comfy shirt with a track suit, or a really comfy shirt and a well-worn pair of jeans so that it can still feel like you've made some effort, helping you feel as fresh as you can.

How she spends her flight time:

I'm used to doing a lot of long-haul flights. My family is South African, so we go back and forth a lot. South African flights are 11- to 13-hour flights, so I try and save movies for the end, because I'm really bad at sleeping on planes so I know I'm going to be up the entire time. I have a ritual: I sit down, I have the same song that I listen to when the plane takes off, and I read for a bit and do some admin, I do some work, and then dinner. Then I will read a bit more and then try and eventually put on a film. And then just watch films. If there's nothing good, or new stuff that I want to see, I'll do rom-coms.

Her best recommendations for traveling through South Africa:

My family is from Knysna, which is about five hours out of Cape Town. You can drive along the Garden Route, a beautiful selection of towns basically along the coast of South Africa, and it's stunning. Nowhere will ever feel as home as that does to me. Also, Hermanus—I went a few years ago—has an incredible curry place that I'm obsessed with. They do fish curry, it's very locally sourced food. Cape Town is stunning. There's just endless spaces to recommend. My uncle's got a trout farm in the mountains, just outside Cape Town. They have a leopard that just lives on the farm. It is totally wild, but they have a nighttime camera and they often see him walking around. It's crazy. My uncle and aunt have been in lockdown there and they were complaining about [how] South Africa was very strict and I was like, “Guys, I don’t feel sorry for you at all. I’ve got a tiny flat in London and you’re in this insane place in the mountains.”

The water sport she can’t get enough of:

I went to Mauritius once to the Maritim Resort. There was something incredible about being at an all-inclusive hotel and you literally just move between the sea and a sun lounger. Also, I'm a really avid water skier. I would honestly do it all the time if I could. I could do that there, and we went back a lot of times, and my brother and I became really good friends with the [staff]. My brother speaks French and these guys spoke French as well. We became really close with them and they would take us out and we would hang out with them, which was really fun.

What she prioritizes when planning a vacation:

It kind of depends what I'm in the mood for, which kind of oscillates between two things—either I know I want to completely relax and I want to basically be catered for and to not have to think about managing stuff. To have fun and relax and basically recharge, I suppose. [Or], more often, I really love exploring places. I'm obsessed with Italy at the moment. I'm actually learning Italian. I've ended up going there quite a lot over recent years. It's just one of those places you're drawn to. I think it's my favorite place in Europe to go. It really is like a pop over. I flew to Venice a few weeks ago, and it was an hour and a half flight. Sometimes it takes me longer in my car to cross London.