Christopher Lane/Contour By Getty Images
May 11, 2017
In The Mix

The King’s Speech

A beloved actor’s depiction of the future king of England lives beyond this mortal coil.

Margy Rochlin

From the editors: Tim Pigott-Smith died in London on April 7; he was 70 and due to appear the following week in a touring production of Death of a Salesman. He was interviewed for this article in February.

It’s difficult to imagine that part of Tim Pigott-Smith’s critically acclaimed portrayal of Charles, Prince of Wales, can be boiled down to three simplified mannerisms — the twirling of his signet ring, a tic involving his right hand pulling on his left cuff and that distinctly Charles-ish way of speaking.

“His mouth remains quite closed when he’s talking and he pulls his mouth down to the left,” Pigott-Smith said. “It changes how you sound — it’s unavoidable.”

After having logged more than 300 performances as the lead in Mike Bartlett’s dystopian play, King Charles III (both in London and on Broadway, the latter for which he received a Tony nomination), Pigott-Smith will be seen reprising his starring role in the Masterpiece television adaptation of the play, debuting May 14 on PBS.

Though the actor spent almost 50 years in film, radio, theater and television — Downton Abbey fans will recognize him as the pompous doctor who caused Lady Sybil’s demise — Prince Charles is the part that required the least research.

“He’s two or three years younger than me and always in the news,” said Pigott-Smith, who had a Technicolor boyhood memory of accompanying his enthusiastic royalist mother to the local cinema to see a newsreel of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation.

“We lived our lives in parallel.” In both the stage and small-screen version, King Charles III envisions a world where the queen has died and her eldest son finally inherits the throne. Expect blank verse, soliloquies, bracing plot twists, Shakespearean touches and, Pigott-Smith predicted, an exceedingly famous public figure eager to tune in.

“[Prince Charles] will be able to watch it at last,” said the actor, noting that the royal family were intrigued enough about the play to send “spies” during its run (they knew their actual presence would spoil the performance). “When royals are in, nobody watches the play, they watch the royals — it’s just awful.”

Not to mention their reaction to some of the play’s nasty turns. “It’s a play that goes into tragic fantasy. It would have been an uncomfortable evening.”


This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, Issue No. 4, 2017

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