The Crown Star Olivia Williams on Camillagate and Playing the Future Queen
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Queen Elizabeth might be experiencing her annus horribilis during the fifth season of The Crown, airing now on Netflix, but she isn’t the only one having a tough time. As Camilla Parker Bowles, Olivia Williams plays a woman whose relationship with the future King of England puts her at the center of a scandal that would dominate headlines for years—thanks in no small part to “Camillagate,” the dust up that occurred after a private call between Parker Bowles and her beau was made public. The regrettable recording and its aftermath are the subject of an entire episode of the series, and even today the tape of the 1989 phone call still casts a shadow over Britain’s King and Queen.
Here, Williams—who’s previously starred in project including The Nevers and Victoria & Abdul—shares what it was like to portray a woman whose private life became public fodder, and whose arc might be (and this is no small feat) The Crown’s most surprising.
Camilla’s more important than ever these days, which nobody could have known when you began filming. What initially brought you to the role?
It was the end of one of the lockdowns—and you know how weirdly blurred all that time is—that my agent came through with the chance to audition to play Camilla. I was thrilled. I'd watched with envy as generation after generation of my friends and contemporaries had been playing members of the Royal Family in The Crown, and I was like, "When's it my turn?" So, I finally got the call, which was lovely, to play a character. I was very happy to be playing Camilla from what I knew of her, and then when I actually read what Peter Morgan's angle was on Camilla, I thought it was fascinating.
How much do you try to get into the actual person as opposed to going your own way with them?
I had played your greatest First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt [in Hyde Park on Hudson]. I wasn't the right age, really, and people said that I didn't look like her. I felt incredibly sympathetic towards her, and I feel the same with Camilla. I just felt there was something in her energy that I completely got. She would probably hear me say that and think, "How impertinent. How dare you feel that you get me." But in the things that I've seen and heard her do, I feel that her behavior in almost all circumstances has been incredibly honorable, humane, and human.
And so, I felt with both Eleanor and Camilla that one's duty to the audience is not necessarily to impersonate the person, but not to be so far from them that it's distracting. You want to recall the person, but in everything beyond that moment of recognition, my duty is to Peter Morgan and the script.
What does it feel like to go and play out what was probably a very regrettable experience for someone?
I in no way think anybody involved directly is going to thank us for this, but it puts you firmly in the shoes of a person experiencing that. The point of this scene is that it has a bearing on the crown, so it's not what they said and it's not what they did, it's what was done with it. Somebody listened to it, somebody taped it, somebody took it to the press, and the press used it. And they kept it in a vault for two years and waited until it did maximum damage. The word “malicious” has come up, but The Crown’s intent is not malicious. It's to demonstrate what malice did with this material.
To my mind, the most important thing about Camilla is her sense of humor. She diffuses every situation with humor, and that is what they are doing in that conversation. You would think from the transcript and the way the transcript had been commented upon that this was some sort of fantasy conversation. It wasn't; it was humor. The people involved would probably like to rip up the record and throw it in the bin and incinerate the bin, but I believe that the episode that has been brilliantly constructed in some way sets the record straight.
Does it change your thoughts on this woman you're playing to know what her real-life trajectory is?
What’s extraordinary for us is that we made this show a year ago. I sat and I read those scripts, I acted them, and I saw an edit of them before the Queen died. Then I watched the edit again after she died, and they hadn't changed, but every word had a completely different significance.
I maintain that Peter Morgan's skill is that he is commenting on all of these events as they pertain to and influence the crown. The sentence that you say when a monarch dies is, "The Queen is dead, long live the King." The crown, the monarchy, instantly moves on. There's no pause for mourning. The position, the institution, instantly transfers to the heir. And that makes it our duty to keep showing and recording because it's more relevant than ever in the light of the Queen's passing. The crown immediately passed to Charles. That process doesn't stop while we all recover.
Do you hope that Camilla watches the season?
I can't go there really, because I can't imagine what it's like watching someone enact events [from your life]. It won't be what happened. We're not trying to recreate an exact reality. We are doing a speculative, dramatic version of events about monarchy. And so, it would just be completely annoying to say, “that never happened.”
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