The Crown's Emerald Fennell Restarted Smoking to Play Camilla Parker-Bowles

From Town & Country

Emerald Fennell commits. The actress, writer, and director went to surprisingly lengths to perfect her performance as The Crown's Camilla Parker-Bowles, picking up smoking again after presumably kicking the habit.

Fennell revealed why she felt it necessary in an interview for Town & Country's cover story, which features her alongside fellow cast members Emma Corrin and Josh O'Connor, the show's Princess Diana and Prince Charles. "There’s a personality type I think that goes with" smoking, Fennell said. It apparently fits well with Camilla, whom Fennell characterizes as "languid, but actively so."

Especially in the period this season of The Crown covers—that of Diana and Charles's brief courtship, followed by the tumultuous early years of their marriage—Camilla has been maligned in the popular imagination. But Fennell thinks there's a lot to admire in her actively languid character. "She’s the only person who didn’t want it and wasn’t impressed by it," she says of the now-Duchess of Cornwall's unique relationship to the royal family.

Fennell—who prior to landing the role of Camilla was best known for her work on Call the Midwife, but has since built an impressive resume of work behind the camera, as a showrunner for a season of Killing Eve and the writer-director behind the very promising Promising Young Woman—has long hoped for the chance to play Charles' once-mistress.

“One day they’re going to want Camilla,” she told her agent awhile back. “Will you make sure that I get to go in?” Thankfully for The Crown viewers, it all worked out.

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