‘The Crown’s’ Dominic West, Olivia Williams on Being ‘Too Hot’ to Play Charles and Camilla
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“The Crown” Season 5, which debuted after months of anticipation on Wednesday, has been touted as the most controversial yet. Mostly because it examines the British Royal Family in the 1990s, a period when they endured one scandal after another as three of Queen Elizabeth’s children split from their spouses – most famously the heir to the throne Prince Charles and his wife, Diana, Princess of Wales – amid allegations of infidelity.
Charles eventually went on to marry his mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles, and the couple ascended to the throne just two months before Season 5 aired, following Queen Elizabeth’s death on Sept. 8. They are now King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort.
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A day after Season 5 dropped on Netflix, Dominic West, who plays Charles, and Olivia Williams, who plays Camilla, sat down to talk to Variety about whether they had any reservations about playing the couple, how they feel about being labelled “too hot” for their characters and what it was like reenacting the infamous “Tampon-gate” episode, the illicitly recorded phone call between Charles and Camilla that was leaked to the press, in which Charles said he wanted to be reincarnated as a tampon so he could live inside Camilla.
How did you get the parts of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles – did you get a call from [showrunner] Peter Morgan?
West: I got a call from Peter.
Williams: Did you?!
West: Olivia had to audition.
Williams: I had to audition with him! And there were two other Camillas in the waiting room.
Dominic, when you got that call was there any hesitation about taking on the role?
West: Only for about eight months. And that will hopefully be resolved soon. No, I was extremely hesitant as you would be, because it’s a bit of a gamble taking on a role that has been so successfully done by another actor [Josh O’Connor played Prince Charles in Seasons 3 and 4] and in a show that’s in its fifth season of triumph, really. And so that was daunting, obviously. Obviously it was daunting playing a character I’ve never done before who’s still alive and one who’s so high profile that everyone knows how they look and how they sound. And everyone has made an opinion about that character in the period that we’re talking about in Season 5, which is, of course, the late ‘90s and the lowest point of his life and the sort of nadir of his public life and private life. So there are all sorts of reservations, as you can imagine, and I think ultimately, though, as an actor you live for great parts with great people and great writing. And this had all three, which is quite rare.
And for you, Olivia, you auditioned, which suggests it was a part you wanted, but once you’ve got it was there any moment of doubt?
Williams: Yeah, there was. I value my privacy. I’ve managed to steer a strange course through my career of being sufficiently employed to earn enough money but to be able to go round a supermarket reasonably unmolested by my clamouring fans. And I was slightly worried that I might have the same fate as Camilla, that people would throw bread rolls at me in [upmarket British grocery store] Waitrose. So, so far, I’ve got away lightly.
It’s been only about 24 hours since Season 5 was released but what have the reactions been life so far?
Williams: I have the astonishing ability to ignore all press, so I don’t know. I only know what my husband and daughter told me, who came to the premiere, and they really enjoyed it.
West: I read every single [review]. Because I always find if you don’t read it and then you go in – I remember doing a play on Broadway once and I thought, “Well, I’m not gonna read the reviews.” And I came into the theatre and it was like a morgue. Everyone looked at me as if my dog had just died. And from then on I’ve read reviews. I think what’s obvious is this season, probably more than previous ones, has stirred up a lot of controversy, partly because the Queen has died. And also because it’s about probably the most tumultuous time of their lives and over a time that more people remember than ever before.
The main criticism I’ve seen is that you both are too hot to be playing Charles and Camilla. What’s your response to that?
West: [Jokingly] Well I think there’s something in that you know. I’ve had worse.
Williams: [The production] will just have to try and suppress how very deeply hot we are for Season 6.
What were your favourite scenes to play in Season 5?
West: There’s a scene in one of the later episodes between Charles and Diana [played by Elizabeth Debicki] where they have a sort of rapprochement after they’re divorced… and I loved it. That was like doing a Peter Morgan one-act play and that’s a rare luxury in television that you get to do a scene that lasts longer than 10 seconds, nevermind 15 minutes.
I do have to ask about “Tampon-gate,” especially because Josh O’Connor said he refused to do that scene. How did you both feel about reenacting it?
Williams: Well, it was so brilliantly written, I think, when you watch the episode. Everybody who wanted to castigate us for depicting it hadn’t seen the episode. But now you have, you see, I hope, that the point of it is not what they say to each other it’s what is done with that information. A gross invasion of privacy and then to publish it maliciously. And the point of the conversation, which I felt we discovered in the playing of it, was that they were joking. It was a loving, jokey conversation, and the actual phrase in question was a piece of sort of rather British self-effacing humour. “Knowing my luck, I would end up as [a tampon]” not “I want to be your [tampon]” and I think the difference between those two phrases is the key to the scene.
West: Not much to add to that, really. But yeah, I mean, really, I remember it at the time as being something sort of sordid. And what you realise is that that’s a perspective that I think the papers and the media really painted it in. When we look back on it now after 20 years, and in a drama, what comes across is it was not the conversation that was sordid, but the prurient interest in it and the way it was printed on the front pages of papers and became a tape that you could call up and listen to. I think people feel very differently about that now and you see who the villains are in the piece. It wasn’t the two lovers, it was the people exploiting them.
Before the interview ended, Williams wanted to acknowledge that it was World Neuroendocrine Cancer Awareness Day [on 11/10]. Neuroendocrine cancer is the type of cancer that both Steve Jobs and Aretha Franklin had. It has also affected Williams herself. “I’ve had neuroendocrine cancer,” she told Variety. “And because of the lack of awareness about what it is and its symptoms… [today] we are raising awareness for neuroendocrine cancer.”
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