As the second part of the final series of The Crown begins to air many have asked. “What was the name of the yacht used in the first part of series six?”
The sixth and final season of Netflix’s The Crown contains scenes featuring the late Princess Diana (played by Elizabeth Debicki). She and her boyfriend Dodi Al-Fayed (played by Khalid Abdalla) are shown onboard Jonikal then the Al-Fayed family’s superyacht.
Diana is sitting on the end of the passerelle above the Mediterranean Sea in a turquoise bathing suit. But as anyone who knows anything about superyachts will tell you, the yacht was not Jonikal or Bash as she has since been renamed.
So, what is the name of the super-yacht, used as the stand in for Jonikal in the series? The answer is Titania. She is a 73 metre Lürssen built superyacht owned by British billionaire John Caudwell, the founder of Phones4U.
According to Burgess the yachts central agent, Titiana was used as a stand-in for Mohamed Al-Fayed’s Codecasa built super-yacht.
In real life, the yacht hosted the princess, her two sons William and Harry, and her boyfriend Dodi Al-Fayed. William, played by Rufus Kampa and Harry, played by Fflyn Edwards, where on a trip around St. Tropez in 1997.
This happened just a week before she and Dodi died in a car crash in Paris.
Paparazzi photos
Their time on the yacht, and some of the iconic paparazzi photos of it, were recreated for season six of the series.
Writing for in an article for Netflix’s companion website for fans, Tudum Lucy Ford says,
“When it came to scenes of Diana and Dodi on the yacht, they did indeed film those moments on a boat on the Mediterranean.”
Big, fancy boat
She quotes Debicki the actress playing Diana as saying, “It was a very big, fancy boat. It was enormous and kind of outrageous and exactly what the story needed. That was pretty extraordinary, to be on a big boat like that with bedrooms the size of people’s apartments. We never really took that for granted.”
Series Production Designer for The Crown Martin Childs told Tudum, “The whole schedule was based around the availability of the biggest yacht.”
Titiana, is a bigger yacht than was Jonikal, furthermore she is a lot younger. Titiana is 73 metres overall and was built in 2006 while Jonikal (now Bash) is only 64 metres and was built in 1990.
Jonikal was built by Codecasa and launched as Sokar so was second hand when purchased by Al Fayed
According to Tudum, the team had to tweak the yacht’s interiors and give her a 1990’s feel for filming The Crown. This involved adding “bulky lamps, varnished teak wood, and particular shades of turquoise and cream.”
“The yacht obviously exists as a contemporary yacht,” Alison Harvey, head set decorator for The Crown told Tudum. “We just had to bring in more ’90s fabric and more ’90s-flavor pictures and paintings and make it a little less on point in terms of proper super-yacht decor today.”