Dominic West felt “extremely sympathetic” to King Charles and his now-wife Queen Consort Camilla after re-enacting the infamous ‘Camillagate’ scandal for “The Crown”.
In 1993, an intimate conversation between the then-Prince of Wales and his lover which had been recorded years before it was made public and the 53-year-old actor admitted revisiting the call, which included the now-king telling Camilla he wanted to “live inside” her trousers but it would be just his luck to be reincarnated as a tampon, has given him a new take on the controversy.
West – who portrays Charles in the upcoming fifth season of the regal drama – told “Entertainment Weekly” magazine: “I remember thinking it was something so sordid and deeply, deeply embarrassing (at the time).
“Looking back on it, and having to play it, what you’re conscious of is that the blame was not with these two people, two lovers, who were having a private conversation.
“What's really (clear now) is how invasive and disgusting was the press’s attention to it, that they printed it out verbatim and you could call a number and listen to the actual tape.
“I think it made me extremely sympathetic towards the two of them and what they’d gone through.”
Both West and his co-star, Olivia Williams – who plays Camilla – were keen to show the couple as sympathetically as possible.
He said: “(Olivia is) extremely bright, she’s extremely forthright, and she had straightaway a sympathy for Camilla, that I shared actually. We both felt that we wanted to do right by our characters.
“We felt the odds were slightly stacked against their relationship and we wanted to try and bring it across in as sympathetic a light as we could.”
The upcoming episodes will also tackle the death of Charles’s late ex-wife Princess Diana and West insisted the subject has been handled sensitively.
He said: “It’s a hell of a season, because it deals with Diana’s death and appalling scenes, like having to break that news to your sons.
“I’ve got two boys of that age and so it’s a heavy, heavy responsibility to get it right and something I think we all take pretty seriously.”
“The Affair” actor initially had reservations about signing up for the show, largely because he was apprehensive about having to follow Josh O'Connor in the role.
He said: “I said, ‘You’ve got the wrong guy, I don’t look anything like him.’
“I was very conscious of Josh’s amazing performance, and his amazing success, and thought it was a bit of a hiding to do nothing to try to follow that.
“I thought about it for several weeks, and it was one of those things you can’t really get out of your head. (I) realised that you’ve got to give it a go because you’ll regret it if you don’t.
“He’s a fascinating man, Charles, and it’s a fascinating life, and a fascinating role. I mean, apart from anything else, it’s a huge show, and I loved the first four seasons.
“I realised that I could very happily live with this character for two years.”