Don’t expect to see any saucy late-night phone calls on “The Crown” next season.
According to Josh O’Connor, who stars as a young Prince Charles on the Netflix drama, he was assured early on in the process that the show would not be re-enacting the infamous 1989 conversation between Charles and his then-mistress Camilla Parker Bowles, now the Duchess of Cornwall.
“When they offered me the role, one of my first questions was — I say questions; I think it was pretty much a statement — ‘We are not doing the tampon phone call,’” O’Connor said in an interview for SiriusXM’s “EW Live.”
British tabloids published transcripts of the secretly recorded conversation between Charles and Camilla in 1992, around the time of the prince’s highly publicized separation from Princess Diana. The highly intimate conversation saw Charles saying he wanted to “live inside your [Camilla’s] trousers or something” and making a joke about a tampon. The incident quickly became known as “Camillagate” or “Tampongate.”
“The Crown” Season 4, which is set to premiere on Netflix later this year, will introduce Charles’ relationship with Diana (played by Emma Corrin) and is expected to cover events through the early 1990s, including the couple’s marriage and eventual separation.
“Pre-‘The Crown’ I had made many independent films, many television shows where there was a lot of nudity and a lot of slightly dodgy characters and this was my one chance for my parents to see something with no shame,” O’Connor said. “There’s no way I was going to scuff on that by talking about tampons on Netflix. So that was like out.”
“Unfortunately all the fans of “Tampongate” will be very disappointed,” he said.