06 January 2024 , 16:00
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Dominic West has explained why he had no choice but to accept the role of Prince Charles when he was cast in the Netflix hit series The Crown.
The 54-year-old actor took over the role of Prince Charles from Josh O’Connor, 34, who played the future king in seasons three and four of the glitzy drama. Dominic himself played the role in seasons five and six - and admits he was apprehensive about playing the part.
With an on-screen career that has stretched back to the beginning of the 1990s, Dominic admits that sometimes you just have to say yes to a role in order to keep money coming in. However, this was not exactly the case for his role in The Crown - as he was so delighted to play the role of Prince Charles.
On Friday, Dominic was a guest on The Graham Norton Show - alongside fellow guests Jacob Anderson, of Game of Thrones fame, ex-Coronation Street actress Michelle Keegan, and comedy icon Alan Carr. While Dominic was on the sofa to promote his involvement in a new stage production of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge, the conversation inevitably turned to The Crown - which concluded on Netflix last year.
Dominic West played Prince Charles in seasons five and six of The Crown (Netflix)Speaking of his joy at being offered the role of Prince Charles, Dominic said: “There was an enormous pressure on The Crown because it was such a successful show before I went in, and Josh did such a great job. But at the end of the day, you’ve got to do parts that appeal to you; not that many come along.
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“When you’ve got a juicy part like that, you can’t turn it down. I loved playing him, he was brilliant.” Dominic went on to explain how he got into character, explaining: “I saw many documentaries on him, one he did with Jonathan Dimbleby. He’s on a plane, and he’s talking about, ‘I don’t do this for my own good, you know – I do this for jolly old Britain.’ And it was so funny, ‘jolly old Britain’, every time I was trying to get into him on set, I’d just go ‘jolly old Britain’. And I was in.”
It’s not the first time Dominic has opened up about his time on the show. Last year, he told Netflix’s Tudum platform: “The main preparation was trying to make a decision about it… One of the reasons I wanted to do the part is because I really like the guy and I’m really interested in things he’s interested in.”
Discussing getting into character at the time, he said that reading King Charle’s 2010 book Harmony helped him get in focus - and listening to the audio version of the book that the monarch himself narrated. He said: “It’s his attempt to synthesize everything he’s ever campaigned about,” explains West of the book. “He realized that it all has a central theme, which is harmony. He spends [eleven] hours narrating this book and that was a gold mine for me, to listen to that. I listened to it all the way through a couple of times, and in the car and driving around Cornwall, and that got me into it.”