Prince Charles becomes more attractive and sensitive in the fifth season of the series The crownThat Netflix premieres Wednesday, November 9 about the troubled 90s for the British royals. Something similar happens with her ex-lover Camila Parker Bowles (in the midst of that decade’s royalist pressure on Lady Di, the “people’s princess”). Carlos and Camila, then much contrasted, are avenged, in their dramatic complexity, in the all-new fifth season of The crown.

Two months ago, on September 8, he passed away Isabella II and her son Carlos was finally able to fulfill his long-delayed wish: he is now King Carlos III and Camila Parker Bowles has become queen consort of the United Kingdom. What better validation of the revisionist gaze exercised by the new season of The crown about the furtive couple of the 90s, the one about the marital and media war between Prince Charles and Princess Diana?

In these ten new episodes of the Netflix fiction -always with an overwhelming narrative effectiveness- it is suggestive to discover and analyze how Carlos goes from being a cold and protocol person to even having a rather progressive vision of the role of the Crown at the local level and global in front of the masses. Precisely in the most traumatic public period of Elizabeth II’s reign, the 1990s, in the context of the 40th anniversary of her investiture.

If in the fourth season (2020) of The crownwith a focus on the 1980s, Olivia Colman played the Queen, Josh O’Connor as the young Prince Charles, Emma Corrin as the naïve Princess Diana Spencer (fiancée and later cheated on wife), and Emerald Fennell as Camila Parker Bowles (the hateful lover), in this fifth season there is a changing of the acting guard, in keeping with the psychological, political and media framework of the 90s.

She is now actress Imelda Staunton (villain Dolores Umbridge in the saga Harry Potter) one that portrays Elizabeth II with dramatic depth. At the same time, with 1.91 meters, Elizabeth Debicki achieves an almost perfect mimesis by putting herself in the skin and hairstyles of Diana (who measured 1.78).

But it will be even more tempting to focus on those who embody the new Carlos and Camila Parker Bowles: the very famous actors Dominic West and Olivia Williams.

Thursday 10, clarion both interviewed exclusively -via Zoom- to analyze the challenges and nuances of their characters, submerged in the 90s: those of the monarchist pressure on Diana Spencer, her media torment, Carlos’ exposed infidelity and the ridicule (in the press and personally ) that he and Camila went through at the same time.

That’s why the first question for Dominic West (53) and Olivia Williams (54) is inevitable.

-What was the hardest and most fascinating part of playing Carlos and Camila?

West replies (also recognized for the crime series The cableof HBO, and for the romantic drama The deal): “The hardest thing was going beyond my perception, and that of the public, of what Carlos was like in the 90s. The very negative and critical look on Carlos, due to the failure of his marriage with Lady Di, covered every other look on him. My intention was to go further and see what made it more complex and profound. For example, the social work he was doing with The Prince’s Trust and the love he felt for Camila Parker Bowles.

And the most fascinating thing about him, thinks West, “is the fact that Charles has met more people than anyone but his mother Elizabeth II. It had never occurred to me that one of the advantages of belonging to a hereditary monarchy is that now that Carlos is king, he has met many more people than any politician. This is something I hadn’t scaled before”.

Completes Olivia Williams: “As for Camila Parker Bowles, I tried to extrapolate gestures from photographs in which she appears cheerful and happy, on a par with what she had to go through for her love for Prince Charles in the 90s. After Carlos’s interview in 1994, her husband Andrew left her. He accepted that Camila was having an affair with Carlos, but not that everyone knew about it.

This had serious consequences, continues the actress. “Camila lost everything in a period of her life when she no longer had her husband and was not yet married to Carlos: it happened in 2005. Camila had no protection in the 90s, for sure, against any cruelty that English press exerted on her. And what was most fascinating about her was watching her emerge from all that ordeal into the dignified woman that she is today.”

Still from Carlos’ point of view, Dominic West tells what he most admires about the former and current king of the United Kingdom. “I think I admire the warmth…the warmth of Carlos,” West says. I think he is a very warm and emotional person. I think we’ve gotten used to seeing our Queen Elizabeth II, the head of state, as someone above emotion. Do not expose any personal or intimate opinions. And with Carlos you see all of this. Carlos can’t help but show what he’s thinking…sort of.

Dominic West smiles and sums up: “Carlos is much more open emotionally and I admire him for that.”

And Olivia Williams, what do you admire about Camila Parker Bowles? “That she, though she was prodded and prodded, she never tried to claim her position or offer her version of her story. This implies enormous generosity and restraint. I think many politicians and world leaders would do well to learn this from Camila.”

Domenico, do you see Carlos as a conservative, a reformist or a rebel? Do you see him as a man of the past or of the future?

Well, two things. One of the tragedies of Carlos’ life was finding himself trapped between his mother’s real time, the 1950s, and his wife Diana’s time: modern times. And through massive social and technological changes, Carlos began to see what he believed monarchy should be.

That was the challenge of his life. We see a lot in the fifth season of The crown as Camila and Carlos discuss what the monarchy should be, contrary to what their mother thought in the 1950s. This is seen in the separation between the Church of England and the state. Or in the right of the eldest daughter to inherit the British throne, in force since 2011.

Carlos thought about it deeply. He was ahead of his time in many ways, including the environment and global warming.

It is clear that this fifth season of The crown it also positions Carlos and Camila as victims of the press, of the same severity as the Crown and of the monarchical status quo. A powerful episode of the Netflix fiction exposes it: the one that reconstructs the interview that Diana gave in 1995 to the television journalist Martin Bashir, from the cycle Panoramafrom the BBC.

It was viewed by 23 million people in the UK. In it, Diana denounced new things, such as that the royal family saw her “as a threat,” like any empowered woman, and said the most remembered line worldwide about Carlos and Camila: “There were three of us in this wedding. It was a little crowded.”

In 2020 it was revealed that Martin Bashir had tricked Diana into gaining her trust (with forged documents, to convince her that the Secret Service was spying on her) and the press itself became the other big villain in Carlos and Diana’s conflict. Dominic West and Olivia Williams know this.

-In season 5 of “The Crown”, is the press seen as a villain?

Dominic West replies: “That’s a good question. Historically, Prince Charles was the big bad for the people. But if we look at the fifth season of The crown the press could be the bad guy. The ones who manipulated Diana into giving that BBC interview. That whole story came to light recently.

In tune, Olivia Williams believes it “raised a lot of questions about Diana’s sanity. She was treated like she was crazy. She said ‘I’m not paranoid, they are really coming for me’. It was a horrible situation because of the press and many other responsible parties.”

The controversy: Is Dominic West too good to be Prince Charles?

Thanks to the seductive smile and intense eyes of Dominic West, this new Carlos of the 90s, in the fifth season of The crown, looks like an English hunk: with a deep voice in the manner of James Bond. Though West’s 53-year-old locks are taut under the then-still heir to the crown side-parted royal hairdo, West’s seductive aura definitely graces this fictional Carlos.

Something similar is happening with Olivia Williams — still in that thick ash-blonde wig — as Camila Parker Bowles. And if many critics of this fifth season focused on that visual aspect (less for frivolity than for dramatic believability), others pointed to the fact that the brand new season premiered very close to the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. Just two months after her death on 8 September.

And if Dominic West hasn’t been called to play Carlos due to his resemblance to him, there is a piece of reality that highlights clear affinities between the two. It is known that West is an ambassador for The Prince’s Trust, the charitable foundation of the current King Carlos III, and that due to his work in The crown offered to resign. But the monarch’s private secretary refused it. And there’s more: West and Charles have seen each other several times.

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