Meg Bellamy praises the wizardry of hair and makeup artists as the plays the princess. Photo / Netflix
Meg Bellamy praises the wizardry of hair and makeup artists as the plays the princess. Photo / Netflix
The Crown actress playing the current Princess of Wales in the final series has revealed she had never been told that she resembled Kate before the role was advertised.
Meg Bellamy’s performance in the Netflix show about the Royal family marks her first professional on-screen role, awarded just months after she finished studies.
Asked if she had ever been told been told that she looked like the Princess, the 21-year-old said: “I never got [told] that and I still think maybe I don’t, but with the amazing hair and makeup teams and the costume department, once everything’s put together, you have to have an essence "
However when the casting call was put on Twitter, a neighbour suggested she audition.
Speaking to The Telegraph’s Luxury Magazine in her first national newspaper interview, Bellamy said: “I didn’t have an agent at the time so I was just doing everything that I could on my own, self-submitting for student films and shorts.
Then in April last year, the opportunity [for The Crown] popped up on my Twitter, and at the same time my neighbour sent it to me and told me that I should go for it. She’d just seen it and she thought that I looked like Kate.”
Ed McVey and Meg Ballamy at the University of St Andrews. Photo / Netflix
Bellamy also revealed that she had studied the princess during the audition process.
“I remember looking at the picture of Kate on the brief and trying to work out exactly where she’d applied her bronzer so that I could do it exactly right, trying to unleash my inner makeup artist,” she said.
“With every audition, I just watched and watched [Kate]. Reading about her and listening to her was so important both before and during. During the time period that I play her, there’s no recording of her speaking so you have to picture her younger.”
Bellamy was working at Legoland when she applied for the role. “In the first round of auditions you had to say something about yourself and tell them your height,” she said. “I told them I was a red brick at Legoland – that was my fun fact.”
She will portray the Princess of Wales in the the sixth and final series of The Crown, which will be split into two parts.
In the sixth and final season of the Netflix hit, the love story between Prince William and Kate Middleton, who met in college in 2001, will be explored. Photo / Netflix
She will star opposite Ed McVey, the second of two new “Prince Williams”, and will depict Kate during her university years at St Andrews, where her courtship with the young Prince began.
The actress said that ahead of the release of the final series she “can still walk around and no one knows who I am”, and that for now the biggest “pinch-me” moment has been being invited to major fashion shows rather than the filming itself.
She also revealed that she had only watched the first season of the show before getting the part.
One of the shots show Kate walking across campus with a backpack on, holding books, while Prince William gazes longingly at her. Photo / Getty Images
While admitting she had no “strong feelings” about the Royal family growing up - in Berkshire, similarly to Kate - she did remember watching Kate and William’s wedding in 2011.
“I sat watching the TV and was totally in awe of her, like we all were,” she said. “Now I can now look back on it and think, ‘Ahhh...’”.
Her comments came after the first full trailer was released for the sixth series on Thursday, showing Queen Elizabeth II telling the ghost of the late Diana, Princess of Wales that she had caused a “revolution”.
In the two-minute trailer, the monarch, played by Imelda Staunton, tells her former daughter-in-law, played by Elizabeth Debicki: “You’ve finally succeeded in turning this house upside down. It’s nothing less than revolution.”
Debicki, 33, has revealed that portraying the late Princess’s final days for the hit drama was “devastating”.
The new series will see Charles grappling with the death of his first wife and the wave of negative public opinion about the monarchy in the wake of the tragedy.
The first four episodes will be released on Nov 16, with the second batch following on December 14.
