Dominic West is a first-time Emmy nominee for his lead role as Prince Charles in The Crown, Peter Morgan’s historical drama about the royal family that garnered a total of 18 noms for its sixth and final season.
“I talked to Jonathan Pryce first, because I said, ‘You’re being a bit greedy having been nominated twice,’ ” West recalls, laughing, of his co-star who’s also received a guest actor nomination for Slow Horses.
West played Prince Charles in seasons five and six of the Netflix series and found the current king to be a man he not only grew to like but someone with whom he shares common interests.
“I think he’s a deeply, deeply thoughtful man and also our most cultured monarch since George IV. I really admire his love of the theater — of Shakespeare, particularly — of gardening and of nature. They’re wonderful attributes, and he has a genuine passion for all those things, particularly acting. I didn’t really realize he did quite a lot of acting in his youth,” says West. “He’s also a very emotional man, which we’re not used to after the last queen. I rather like that he wears his heart on his sleeve a bit.”
The final season of The Crown was particularly emotional given the context of what happens. How did you prepare for that undertaking?
I suppose the first and most important thing I had to do was remember that the guy I was playing is famous and is a real person and you have to use your own emotion and your own response to the situation. It’s difficult with The Crown because it was such a well-known show and because Josh O’Connor had done so brilliantly as Charles [in seasons three and four], it was difficult to get over that initial urge to do an impersonation to look like the guy or sound like the guy. That took me the whole of [my] first season. For [my] second season, I was able to relax a bit more and just respond to the material.
What was your approach to the role from the outset?
I read everything and I watched everything. I had a movement coach, I had a voice coach. The Crown is an amazing production — it has a lot of resources, and they have this incredible research department and I used them a lot for their material. I went all out to try and fill the space between how he looks and sounds and how I look and sound, which is not very similar at all.
Charles and Queen Elizabeth don’t have a typical mother-son relationship. How did you find the right chemistry with Imelda Staunton?
I’ve worked with Imelda three or four times now, so I know her fairly well, and I know that you have to be on your game with her. She’s no-nonsense. She’s terrifying. (Laughs.) No, she’s not terrifying, but she can be. If you’re not pulling out all the stops and working as hard as she is, then she’ll let you know, which is wonderful actually, because you come in with your best game, and you need to with her because she’s so damn good. I just love the scenes with her because you know she’s going to be so on it and so ready.
Was it hard to leave Charles behind when the show wrapped?
I really got to like him. I loved sort of living with him for two years. I love his clothes and I love his cars and his houses and everything about it. I listened to his book that he’s written called Harmony several times in order to get his voice, and in that book, he sort of sets out his manifesto and his beliefs, and I found them extremely admirable. I think he’s an amazing man, so I sort of miss him. I miss being bowed to. That was a big change. Going home and no one bowing to me, that takes a lot of getting over. (Laughs.) But I’ve done very long-running TV series, and you find them quite tricky after two or three seasons. It’s a long ordeal. One of the things I got into acting for was that you do something very intensely for a finite amount of time. And so I loved the fact that I only had to do two [seasons]. I could have easily done another one, but I was happy to move on, particularly because with The Crown and with that subject matter, you have to answer an awful lot of questions about the royal family and about how The Crown portrays the royal family. I was glad not to have to do that anymore.
This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
