When Emma Corrin arrives at Hampstead Heath on a cloudy spring morning, the sun makes its first appearance in days, as if it has finally decided to make its grand entrance just for them. This is where the 28-year-old actor spends most mornings, with a coffee in hand and their dog, Spencer (no relation to Diana), tagging along. “He’s actually on the Heath—we might run into him,” they say, looking out across the field, towards where Spencer runs wild at doggy daycare.
With its winding routes and rolling hills, the heath is the kind of serene haven you can get lost in. Which, for Corrin, is not always a good thing. “My therapist is like, ‘You’ve got too much time to think,’” they say, laughing. They’ve had a lot to mull over. Ever since the actor was anointed as a teenage Princess Diana in The Crown in 2020, they have, purposefully, kept themselves busy. At first there came more period dramas about isolated women in similarly suffocating marriages (My Policeman, Lady Chatterley’s Lover), followed by a striking pivot, typified by Corrin’s sleuthing hacker in the underseen miniseries A Murder at the End of the World.
This summer promises to propel Corrin into a whole other stratosphere with the biggest role of their career so far in Deadpool & Wolverine. The third entry of Ryan Reynolds’ meta-wisecracking superhero franchise arrives at an unenviable time, in which the Marvel Cinematic Universe is no longer a money-printing machine and the summer box office is begging for an adrenaline shot. Ironically, the film feels like one of the safest bets of the year. Perhaps it can bring more than just Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine back from the dead.
In Deadpool, Corrin sheds the image of the straight-laced women who have come to define their early roles, stepping into unfamiliar shoes as Cassandra Nova. The name itself will trigger a shiver for those in the know: Cassandra, who can be seen in the Deadpool trailer manipulating Wolverine’s limbs like a marionette, is a canonically major X-Men antagonist who possesses psychic powers on par with Charles Xavier’s. But when we meet in late spring, Corrin is tight-lipped. The full trailer has yet to be released, and the identity of their character is still being closely guarded. Corrin is fully cognizant of what happens when an MCU actor accidentally spills closely-guarded secrets. As we walk towards one of Corrin’s favorite coffee shops, they acknowledge that they really can’t confirm the role, as much as I attempt to convince them to reveal it anyway. The information is out there if you look hard enough, right? “Sorry, I wouldn’t care as much, except that it’s Marvel,” they apologize.
Exiting the Heath, a passerby locks eyes with Corrin, lighting up in recognition before moving on. Corrin offers a polite smile in return. It feels like they’re slowly settling into a new way of living, where they greet people they don’t know, and accept that being recognised at any moment is something normal; that, before long, walks on Hampstead Heath might not be so easy.
