Khalid Abdalla has said that playing Dodi Fayed in the sixth and final season of The Crown was a major responsibility and that it was his duty to dignify a man who is often overlooked when it comes to Princess Diana's story.
The actor and political activist, who previously starred in United 93, Our Kind of Traitor and Assassin’s Creed, plays the Egyptian billionaire who was in a relationship with Diana in the summer before her death.
Fayed, the son of Harrods and Ritz Hotel Paris owner Mohamed al-Fayed, died in the car crash which also claimed Diana’s life in August 1997.
However, more than 25 years later, everybody knows about Diana but Dodi remains largely shrouded in mystery and has long been a figure of tabloid infamy.
Speaking to RTÉ Entertainment via Zoom, Egyptian native Abdalla said, "It was my responsibility to reclaim him. Dodi has existed o supermarket shelves in magazines on the periphery of vision and yet ask anyone, unless they’ve seen season five of The Crown, about him and there’s barely anything they can tell you about him.
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"What does he sound like? They might know a little bit about his father . . . there are still people who ask me if he’s still alive and they big question is why? Beyond tabloid infamy, there is the broader cultural question of whose stories we tell and whose we don’t and why that’s the case.
Abdalla said that he wanted to return dignity to a man who is often overlooked in the about the death of Diana in August 1997.
"It is one of the great honours of my life that finally after 26 years that he’s know a little and hopefully loved and finally after 26 years," he said. "And in returning that dignity to him, to me, that returns dignity to all of us because there is no one on this earth who deserves to be treated as if their death is on the periphery of vision.
He added, "I somehow feel a debt of gratitude to Diana also because I feel the way she looked at people was through the light that shines inside them, rather than the colour of their skin or their status.
"I see some sort of through line to the opportunity in this season of The Crown to dignify them both by telling the story in which they are both full breathing people with bodies and intergenerational stories behind them that are so vibrant, that millions cried about, without telling the story of the two of them.
In early 2011, Abdalla was among protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt in the major protests against the Hosni Mubarak regime.
That same year he became one of the founding members of the Mosireen Collective in Cairo: a group of revolutionary filmmakers and activists dedicated to supporting citizen media across Egypt in the wake of Mubarak's fall.
Abdalla also says the last season of The Crown addresses greater cultural questions.
"And it also touches on another huge cultural question, with everything that’s going on in the world right now, and that is how many Arab characters can I think of in film on this side of the world who you get to know and you get to love and if they die, mourn them? And I can barely think of any."
The first four episodes of The Crown series six are available on Netflix now, with the final six episodes available from Thursday, 14 December.
