God save the … menstrual product? Viewers of The Crown got a long-teased moment in season-five episode “The Way Ahead,” which features a reenactment of Camilla Parker Bowles (Olivia Williams) and Prince Charles’s (Dominic West) amusingly gynecological phone-sex that was published by the tabloids in 1993. (“I wish I could live inside your trousers or something,” the future king offers at one point.) The invasion of privacy is appalling; the conversation, bordering on cringey. But it’s also, in its own way, kind of endearing. They made each other laugh. She knew how to rein him in. They were happy. “I think they forget,” Camilla later says in the season, “loving the Prince of Wales has cost me everything.” And look at her now, the queen consort.
Camilla’s relationship with Charles gets further nuance in this season of The Crown, with a particular focus on the “gratuitous sadistic exhibitionism” the press — and, by association, the country — attacked her with during the “Tampongate” era. As we know now, of course, the subsequent humiliation only made them a stronger couple, with Camilla still a sharp and humorous presence in the public eye. Williams can’t begin to fathom how she did it.
How’s your day going?
It’s been great. Do you know what’s been a relief? That rude bastard Dominic West has gone home and this interview is all about me.
Exactly. Was it an egg-free day for you two?
Everybody has been charming. Either they’re very good liars or they all love the show. Allegedly.
I find Camilla to be one of the most — if not the most — enjoyable people within the royal family to watch from afar. You’re probably the only character allowed to have fun on the show. I guess Anne, too.
Absolutely. It was something that I discovered with the research I was doing: She has quite a wicked sense of humor and it’s clear even from the famous taped-phone conversation that she turns everything into a joke. And quite a saucy joke. I think her sense of humor is like a Benny Hill sense of humor — she finds a double entendre entertaining, as do I, so I feel that was a very good route into her personality for me.
What other fascinating tidbits did your research uncover?
I enjoy the fact she clearly likes to drink. Her father imported wine after he left the military. He imported wine and she enjoys a glass of Claret. She was almost a professional smoker and legendarily rarely without a cigarette. You see that so rarely now. If you look back 20 years, everybody was smoking all the time. It was quite hard. There were a couple of scenes where I was smoking in the living room or in the kitchen or in the bedroom, and that’s just so socially unacceptable now. I felt quite uncomfortable doing it, even on set.
In the period when they were married, but before the queen passed away, whenever you saw them they seemed to be laughing and pointing at something. Always some private joke going on. I’ve also heard she’s got a really foul mouth and that she loves to swear. I’ve got quite a foul mouth, so I was looking for the things where I felt connected to her. I threw in as many mild expletives as I could get away with into the script, and Peter Morgan was up for that.
What did you sneak in?
I don’t know if you caught it, but it’s a very English phrase. My dad used it a lot. Camilla said they made “a bugger’s muddle” of something, which was to make a mess of it. “Bugger” is quite an entertaining swear word from another generation for us. I think it probably wouldn’t pass the politically correct fascists nowadays. But yeah, that was my favorite one that I was allowed to add. Oh, there’s a few “arses” in there.
This all solidifies my theory that Camilla is the only royal I would want to befriend.
Oh, definitely, without question. I think the other thing I like about her, which I’m very bitter about, is that she likes riding horses and I like riding horses. I thought this might finally be the role I can ride a horse, which is on my résumé, could actually be proven to be the case. The last time I rode a horse was The Postman back in 1997. In all the Jane Austen adaptations, you have to sit in the back of a carriage if you’re a woman. I was hoping to do at least one hunting scene with Camilla.
That’s what season six is for.
Let’s hope so. Now that I’ve been elevated to Queen Consort, maybe they’ll take some script notes from me. And a pay rise.
Should I just go ahead and ask about the tampon phone-sex?
Go, go! What have you got?
Was this scene addressed early on in your casting process? I remember Josh O’Connor said, back when he was playing Charles, that he would’ve refused the role if it was included in the show, which seems like a silly stipulation.
Yeah, it was my audition. It was like, How do you do, Dominic West? I’m a huge fan of your work in The Wire, and now let’s talk tampons. It was very clear early on to play the scene as a piece of drama and to read the lines as they were written. The only way the scene worked dramatically … not if you read it in the newspaper, but if you were trying to dramatize it, it begins as a conversation and Camilla turns it a bit Benny Hill and rude for the purposes of humor. Then the famous comment itself wasn’t “I want to be your tampon.” It was, “Knowing my luck I would end up as your tampon,” which is British self-effacing humor.
To me, there’s a continuum. There’s the Benny Hill humor, which is Camilla just saying “knickers” and “bottom” and everybody falls about laughing. And then there’s The Goon Show, which starred a man named Spike Milligan. If you understand that Charles loved The Goon Show and Camilla loved Benny Hill, then the whole conversation takes on a different light. Who was the bloke in all the Pink Panther films?
Oh, Peter Sellers.
Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan both starred in The Goon Show, which Prince Charles loved. That type of absurdist and surreal comedy. The Goon Show really gave us Monty Python. If you think of the comments about the tampon being an absurdist Monty Python sketch, it ends up with Charles, literally, saying he would go round and round the bowl and never flush down. It’s not a sexual fantasy.
Starring John Cleese as Charles and Michael Palin as Camilla.
Can’t you see it? Terry Gilliam would then have a huge cartoon foot land on the whole scene.
Did you find their words to be sexy in any way, or was it hard keeping a straight face?
It’s not meant to be a sexy scene. I did laugh, and the laughter is there onscreen for you to see, and that’s the point. Also, the episode was directed by a genius filmmaker named May el-Toukhy, and look at the way she placed that scene throughout that episode. It begins as an innocuous scene with the Parker Bowles family at Christmas, and then she goes upstairs to receive the phone call and you’re taken away again. Then you go back and then there’s this creeping feeling. It’s like, Oh my God, it’s that scene. They’re going to say those words.
The scene unfolds and it’s intercut with each member of the family reading the transcript in the cold light of day in the newspapers. Can you imagine? It’s like having your childhood diary read out by your mother to your father at the dining table. It’s some sort of living hell. And then the last scene — which is pure John Cleese in Fawlty Towers when he’s hitting the car and ends up holding his head and rolling around on the floor in frustration. Charles just drops his head into his hands in profile and screams. Isn’t that a beautiful bit of filmmaking?
Anybody who says that The Crown is furthering the horrible reporting of this conversation, I disagree. It’s about the effect of this conversation on the monarchy because it was taken, it was listened to, it was stolen, it was published, and it was used to try and bring down the monarchy and to make Charles look ridiculous when he was trying to do some good in the world. That is why the scene is important, not because of the dirty things that they were saying to each other, but because of what the press did with it and how we all wanted to read it. We all listened to it and were shocked about things that we all do and say. It was their sense of humor. It was their conversation. It’s not for us to judge them.
Did this scene help deepen your understanding of their relationship?
Absolutely. The fact that either of them had that published out there and still appear and walk around. In any other period, if a scandal like that had been out there, you would disappear without a trace. But they’re still out and facing the world with that. We have never seen Camilla rise. There’s never been a Camilla, Her Story program or a Camilla tweet saying “bugger off to the lot of you.” She has kept an incredibly dignified silence and is now with the same press who were camped out in her front garden, illegally trespassing on her property, and taking pictures of her in the ’90s. Now she will turn to them at a press conference and give them a wink and be friendly and funny and cooperative. That expresses such incredible magnanimity and good nature and restraint. I wouldn’t be able to be so restrained if people had made my life as miserable as that, to be so generous as she is now. If that’s her role in Charles’s life, he’s a much happier person and more able to go about the important work he has done with a stable, loving, devoted, funny woman at his side.
Her restraint is pretty astonishing.
Look at the extraordinary causes she supports. She’s a real advocate for women. She has worked for charities that support battered women and women who’ve been abused. The one time I came across her was when I was a judge one year on the Booker Prize. She’s the patron of the Booker Prize and also runs a book club for children. She’s an advocate of good causes and uses what weird celebrity she has for the benefit of people and things she really cares about. I’m a bit of an annoying fan of hers, I’m afraid.
Tell me what it was like to meet her.
Before I met a member of the royal family, I was like, Everybody is equal and they’re not special and I won’t curtsy and no one should get more deference than anybody else. And recorded forever on-camera is me clearly curtsying, sycophantically laughing, and smiling at everything. [Laughs.] She was very funny. She and I are both fans of Radio 4, which is a bit like NPR for us across the pond. It’s actually in the transcript of the tampon scene, which nobody who doesn’t know Radio 4 will get, but one of her parts of her love play is when says, “It’s like that program Start the Week. I can’t start my week without you.” Anybody who can incorporate the titles of Radio 4 programs into their love play, you’ve got to give them a literary medal right there. There’s Money Box Live, there’s The Archers Omnibus. Try and incorporate that into your love play. But Camilla got there. She’s the winner.
Okay, challenge accepted.
I want to hear your love play include the phrase “Morning Becomes Eclectic.” Or “This American Life.”
If Camilla agreed to meet you for a boozy and cigarette-filled dinner, what would you want to ask her?
I think I would ask her forgiveness for anything that … oh wow, I’m feeling a bit tearful. [Pauses.] That’s weird. I didn’t think that would happen. But if anything we have done in this show has caused her pain or grief or discomfort, I’d like to say I’m sorry because that certainly wasn’t my intention.
I think Charles and Camilla both come off sympathetically this season.
I really believe that is the spirit in which it was done.
I mean, it was a huge glow-up for Charles to be portrayed by Dominic.
Yeah, a few too many people have said that to him today. He needed to go home and just get off his high horse.
See, that’s why I didn’t want to talk to him. He doesn’t need another ego boost.
There’s nobody else who needs to tell him he’s sexy. All right!
It’s like, well, Olivia is hot as Camilla, so what about that!
Oh, thank you. Thank you very much!
What were your perceptions of Camilla while growing up? Have they evolved over the years — and especially now by portraying her?
I was a teenager when Charles and Diana were married. I was completely subjected to the propaganda of the time. I remember when somebody said to me that Diana was having an affair, I simply didn’t believe it and told them to take that filthy phrase out of their mouths. All I saw were the only pictures available of Camilla, of her looking hatchet-faced and miserable. They used to set up pictures of her looking mean and sidelong, and then they’d put a picture of Diana looking innocent next to her. All of those photos of Camilla were taken by a man illegally trespassing on her property — taking photographs of her through a rhododendron bush. She looked either like she didn’t expect to have her picture taken or she just realized there was a man in a rhododendron bush trespassing on her property.
There was no other access and she was cut loose. After Charles did the interview with Jonathan Dimbleby, her husband understandably wanted a divorce. He was prepared to be in the marriage while the affair was reasonably discreet. But once it was out there, he wanted a divorce. It was quite a while before Charles was able to work out a way for them to marry. In those years, she was cut loose. She had to leave her family home. She didn’t have any protection. She wasn’t someone who had a PR person. Those were dark, dark days. She was the same age around then as I am now. To lose all that is devastating in any life, however privileged you are.
How quickly did you befriend your wig? It physically transforms you. No joke, I’m trying to get my hair to look like that at the moment.
Your hair is great and I think if you ever want to cut your hair, we could probably use it in next season’s wig, because you are rocking the slightly more silvery Farrah Fawcett look.
Oh my God …
Which you will see in the Camilla wedding wig. Oh, spoiler alert. Anyway, no, they put the wig on me and my work was done. I don’t really have to do anything else. Once they put the wig on, the performance is complete. I could just leave the wig on set and go home, because it’s such a fabulous, iconic portrayal of that person. It’s transformative the second it goes on and I have the wig department to thank for most of my work on this show.
