How does that criticism affect you?
I’ve done it in the theatre, where you come in on a hit play – I took over for Rufus Sewell on Rock and Roll – and it’s a thankless task, but you can’t turn these roles down just because someone else has been brilliant. I mean, the only criticism I get is everyone says I’m miscast. And, I’m not sure I disagree with that, but I did my best and I had a lot of fun doing it.
In an interview The Crown’s movement coach said that the members of the Royal Family are always led through life by people – they never have to figure out where they’re going, and that impacts how they move around the world. How did they affect your portrayal of Charles?
I remember I made the mistake early on going like that [West leans forward with his hand outstretched]. He’d never lean into it. He expects people to come to him.
There are a couple of deeply emotional scenes for Charles this season, where he learns about Diana’s death, and where he goes to identify the body. How did you tap into that grief?
[The Crown writer] Peter Morgan had written it that he “howls” with grief. Twice. Once in the Scottish mountains and once in the Paris hospital. I thought, ‘oh god, how does a famously buttoned-up royal family [member] grieve?’. What are they like when they get emotional when it’s not something we ever really see? I worried about it quite a long time, but I was glad [Morgan] chose to do it that way, rather than have him be buttoned up and cold. I think it’s a better insight into what’s going on inside his mind. The turmoil of grief mixed with guilt is an intensely dark place, I think.
This was about the usual acting question: “What if?” What would I feel if that was me? I’ve got two sons, what would I feel if I had to tell them that their mother’s dead?
I read that Elizabeth Debicki was in the room for you for the identification scene in the morgue. What do you see when you’re looking down at her and falling apart?
She was there [in the room], but when I’m looking down at her corpse, I was [just] looking at the camera with a cross on it. It’s a very emotional scene and there has to be a sense of him seeing [her body] and crumbling. All those emotions cascading in on him: guilt and horror and regret and grief. And, then actually to bring the howl out of it as well. It was a fucking hard thing to do. I did quite well on those scenes, I have to say.
And then there’s the other scene with Diana…
The ghost.
Is it a ghost?
Well, I don’t know if we call it a ghost. Maybe we did call it a ghost before the critics did. I suppose she is a ghost. When I first read it, I thought that’s, that’s that’s an interesting choice by Peter and seems a bit of a departure, you don’t see the supernatural much in The Crown. Then watching it the other day, I thought it’s actually a really successful dramatic device. If you want to know what Charles is thinking at that moment, you could have a voiceover, but it wouldn’t be as dramatic.
