The list of scandals that The Crown Season 5 deals with is long: Prince Andrew and Fergie’s toe-sucking outcry, Diana’s BBC interview or the alleged affair between Prince Philip and Penelope Knatchbull.
But from the Season horriblis of the Netflix series, one incident stands out: the tampon gate. The story of the dirty talk between then-Prince Charles and his girlfriend Camilla not only happened exactly as portrayed on the show – it’s also extremely embarrassing. This applies to us viewers and also to those involved and their actors.
Royal Phone Sex in The Crown: What is the Tampon Gate?
The Crown – S05 Trailer (German) HD
One night in 1989 Camilla and Charles have an intimate phone call. The conversation rocked up to you playful dirty talk.
Camila was still married to her then husband, Charles was struggling through his marriage to Diana. The conversation was intercepted, recorded and released to the press (by whom exactly is not known).
First 3 months after Charles and Diana officially splitin 1993, the recordings were made public and so were the following lines of dialogue.
The separated lovers are obviously trying to establish that closeness that the royal family, the public and their respective private ties forbid them. These circumstances make the conversation even more intimate and his publication so unbearable. Not a word was even remotely intended for the public.
In the scene, Charles is played by Dominic West, with whom not all viewers are happy. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the actor said of the scene and its real-life role model: “I remember it as something dirty and deeply embarrassing”
Looking back and playing it makes you realize that the Don’t blame these two people lies, a couple in love having a private conversation. It is now clear how intrusive and perverse the attention of the press was that they printed it verbatim, you could call a number and listen to the real recording.
The Netflix series rotates the cast of the real characters regularly to reflect the chronological progression of events. In season 4, Josh O’Connor portrayed the heir to the throne in his younger days and the actor is just glad to have escaped the fate of Dominic West.
Ex-Charles actor from The Crown didn’t want to act the phone sex scene
©Netflix
Young Charles in The Crown
In 2020, O’Connor revealed that he would never, under any circumstances, have played the tampon scene.
When they offered me the role, one of my first questions – actually it was more of a statement – ‘We don’t make the tampon call’.
The reason is simple: O’Connor had acted in some nude scenes before and he wanted his Finally showing parents something he didn’t have to be ashamed of.
I really didn’t want to spoil this by talking about tampons. So that was out of the question.
The reactions of the two British Charles actors show how present the Tampongate still is in the British public today. It’s hard to imagine how the real King Charles and the real Camilla look back on the scandal.
You can stream all 10 episodes of season 5 of The Crown on Netflix.
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