As fans eagerly await the start of the new season of The Crown, Buckingham Palace worries about Charles III’s reputation. Apparently not without reason: because the infamous “Tampon Gate” is one of the scandals that the series picks up on.
The new season of “The Crown” shows the British royals in the 90s – a decade full of scandals and crises for the royal family. In particular, the broken marriage between Prince Charles, now King Charles III, and his first wife, Princess Diana, should take up a lot of space.
“There were three of us in that marriage, so it was a bit crowded,” Diana said in the scandalous 1995 BBC interview, which journalist Martin Bashir rigged up by using forged documentation. And not only this interview is said to be the subject of “The Crown”, but also the “three-marriage” with all its scandalous circumstances.
Ahead of the fifth season, set for release on November 9, Charles actor Dominic West revealed the TV show will also feature the infamous 1993 ‘tampon gate’ scandal. Leaked phone records at the time revealed Charles telling then-lover Camilla Parker Bowles that he wanted to “live in her pants” and that if he were lucky he would “be reborn as her tampon”.
West said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that he thought the scandal must have been something “deeply embarrassing” at the time. “If you look back on it and have to play it, you realize that it wasn’t the fault of those two people, two lovers having a private conversation.” What was really clear to him, West said, was the “intrusive and disgusting” reporting, “they printed it verbatim” and you could listen to the recording.
The actor went on to explain that portraying the scandal with co-star Olivia Williams, who plays Camilla in season five, made him feel sorry for Charles and Camilla “for what they’ve been through.”
Before filming “The Crown”, Dominic West probably had doubts as to whether he could make a good Charles, as he explained in an interview with the British “Daily Mail” in April. For West, it was “disturbing” that he didn’t look like Charles at all when he looked in the mirror, the Briton says. He repeatedly told the series’ producers that they had cast the wrong person. However, they then explained to him that the production was not about imitations. Nevertheless, it was difficult, after all he was playing “a real person who was incredibly famous and recognizable”.
In addition, the actor knows the current king personally. “Yes, I’ve met him a few times,” says the 53-year-old, who lives near Charles’ country estate, Highgrove House. West said he was a “huge fan” of Charles.
(This article was first published on Wednesday, October 19, 2022.)
