The Crown’s Bertie Carvel ‘hated’ filming Tony Blair coronation

Bertie Carvel speaks to Yahoo UK about making a grand entrance in The Crown with a scene that shows Tony Blair being crowned king.

Transcript

00:00 The opening scene with your character, which is his coronation,

00:03 which was a very interesting, very bold way to start and introduce him.

00:07 I wondered what was that scene like to film

00:09 and what did you make of that being the way to bring him into the series?

00:13 I loved reading it and I hated shooting it.

00:17 I think it's a brilliant and kind of hilarious gesture

00:22 because, of course, it's the Queen's nightmare in the series.

00:28 And so that gives us licence to really push the envelope in terms of...

00:35 It's sort of stylistically bold.

00:38 And I love the theatricality of it, but I really found it tricky to shoot

00:42 because an actor's greatest fear is to be found out not to be who they say they are,

00:49 which is crazy because none of us are.

00:52 But when you're doing something that is sort of deliberately not real,

00:58 it can feel quite...

01:01 It's one thing doing that on stage, but somehow surrounded by...

01:06 There are so many opportunities to kind of feel like an imposter on a film set

01:13 because the amount of time that you're doing the work that people see

01:19 is tiny next to all the set-up and all the retakes

01:23 and somebody diving in to change the background and whatever it is.

01:27 So the opportunities for distraction are enormous

01:31 and all you really have to cling on to is your preparation and your character,

01:37 whatever that has turned out to be.

01:39 But if that is someone else's dream...

01:42 (LAUGHS)

01:43 I'd spent all this time preparing to persuade myself

01:46 that I could hold my head high as Mr Blair,

01:49 but now I'm playing someone's dream of Blair,

01:51 which is like another level of kind of...

01:54 It's very meta.

01:56 So I really hated-- And people kept coming up to me and saying,

01:59 "Oh, you must be having so much fun. It looks like so much fun."

02:02 And I was just-- Through gritted teeth, I'd be like, "Yeah, it's great."

02:06 And wearing a crown that will fall off any second.

02:09 I mean, I have some great sympathy with His Majesty

02:12 because watching his coronation, I thought, "I know how that feels now."

02:16 You've got this wobbly, great object on your head.

02:19 You're just thinking, "Any second now, I'm going to trip and fall

02:22 "over my ermine train, and the crown's going to brain the person next to me."

02:28 And, you know... (LAUGHS)

02:30 Anyway, but it was fun to look back on.

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