Just a few days before the release of The Crown season five, Dominic West, who is set to star a younger King Charles III (then still Prince Charles) as his marriage to Princess Diana unravels, has recently teased that the upcoming season will feature Tampon Scandal.
He also teased how the show will be tackling the couple’s infamous 1993 ‘Camillagate’ scandal, in which a leaked audio recording revealed Charles saying that he wanted to “live inside” Camilla’s trousers, but with his luck, he’d be reincarnated as her tampon. In the latest interview with Entertainment Weekly, the actor shared, “I remember thinking it was something so sordid and deeply, deeply embarrassing [at the time].”
West continues, “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.”
West went on to say that reenacting the scene with costar Olivia Williams, who starred as Camilla in season five, made him “extremely sympathetic towards the two of them and what they’d gone through.” Moreover, the upcoming season will also recreate the 90s scandal and Diana’s 1994 revenge dress, which has already been leaked in paparazzi photos.
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Elizabeth Debicki, who will play the role of Diana from Emma Corrin, said her close friends were nearly as excited about the iconic outfit as they were to hear she was cast at all. “It fascinated me how entranced people were with that dress,” she said. “When it became known that I had the part, I received these text messages saying congratulations, [but] there was also a huge amount of text messages about the Revenge Dress. ‘Do you get to wear the Revenge Dress?’ ‘Oh my God, you get to wear the Revenge Dress!'”
The actress also shared that wearing that infamous dress “provoked something in me as an actor.” “I can’t really explain it,” she said. “It’s pretty incredible that a dress would represent a moment in history, or that this human’s life would represent so much and become so iconic. So that was a big day on set for me!” You can stream The Crown season 5 on November 9 on Netflix.