Playing Prince Charles in ‘The Crown’ was ‘f–ked up’
Josh O’Connor skyrocketed to fame starring as a young Prince (now King) Charles in “The Crown.”
But the British actor now calls that period of his life “f–ked up.”
The “Only You” star, 33, appeared as the monarch, now 74, in Seasons 3 and 4 of the Netflix royal drama.
“It was a fucked-up time,” confessed O’Connor, who won a Golden Globe and an Emmy for his performance, in a new interview with British GQ.
“I found it so impactful, people stopping me,” he recalled of the spike in notoriety. “You want to be in stuff that’s successful and seen, but I think sometimes we underestimate how powerful even a slight loss of anonymity can be.
“What I was doing in my career before ‘The Crown’ — I just wanted to carry on doing that,” he confessed.
One of the “Florence Foster Jenkins” star’s next projects is the drama “La Chimera,” which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this past May.
He also dished that the movie is “much more me than ‘The Crown’” in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
“I love ‘The Crown,’ but that was a moment in time, an incredible moment, and I’m eternally grateful for it, but that was a character [Prince Charles] for which I really had no concept,” O’Connor explained.
“Of course, I never have a full concept of any character, but I found Arthur [in ‘La Chimera’] easier to access in some ways because I sort of desired what he had,” he continued. “I was intrigued by him, by his interest in artifacts, and, yes, even by his ability to see the unseen.”
The feature is written and directed by Alice Rohrwacher and chronicles a young British archaeologist (O’Connor) who gets himself involved in a plan involving stolen Etruscan artifacts during the 1980s.
Isabella Rossellini also stars in the romance flick.
Elsewhere in his GQ interview, O’Connor divulged that he tried to get singer FKA Twigs’ attention while at school.
The two both attended St. Edward’s School back in the day, a private co-ed Catholic school located in Gloucestershire, England.
“I really shouldn’t be saying this, but it’s hilarious. I was in a band called Orange Output basically to try and get Twigs to go out with me,” O’Connor recalled.
“I was the lead singer, and one of the lyrics I wrote was, ‘I’m addicted to crack, motherf–ker.’ The closest thing I’d had to crack was Coco Pops … I don’t think she knows who I am,” he quipped.
When the publication contacted the musician after the interview, she sweetly responded in an email: “I’m very flattered that he tried to do that because I was definitely not cool and not particularly popular.”
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