Thank God for Helena Bonham Carter, one of the last genuine eccentrics we have in this world. Bonham Carter’s press tour to promote season three of The Crown has yielded an embarrassment of riches, anecdote-wise. The actress has delightfully discussed how, in order to play Princess Margaret, she communed with the late royal via a spiritual medium (apparently when Bonham Carter asked Margaret’s ghost if the princess was comfortable with Bonham Carter playing her, the ghost replied that she was a “better idea” than the other actor up for the role); her relationship with her new (much younger, very cool) “magic” boyfriend, Norwegian writer Rye Dag Holmboe; and how her uncle worked with and may have been romantically linked to the princess.
Last night, she stopped by Andy Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live!, where celebrities tend to get notoriously loose. And Bonham Carter revealed that once, while drunk, she asked Prince William, also drunk, to be her children’s godfather. "I wasn't that drunk,” she told Cohen, “But enough drunk for me not to drink anymore."
Bonham Carter shares two children, Billy, 16, and Nell, 11, with ex Tim Burton. Billy already had godparents, so she tried to nab a royal one for Nell.
"Thing is, I'd spent all my friends as godparents on my first child, so Billy had 11 godparents,” she said. “So, I thought I could make up for Nell, you know who suddenly came along and we didn't have any left. I thought, 'Well, if I give her Prince William that would cover,' you know?"
The Duke of Cambridge cut the whole thing off. "He just said, 'You don't want me to be godfather to your child,'” Bonham Carter recounted. “And I left. I mean obviously, it didn't work out." Maybe Harry can jump in.
Originally Appeared on W
