How ‘The Crown’ Season 5 Made ‘Tampongate’ Sympathetic for Prince Charles, Camilla Parker Bowles
The Crown Season 5 covers the breakup of Prince Charles (Dominic West) and Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) in the ‘90s. Part of that scandal includes the infamous “Tampongate” between Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles (Olivia Williams). The infamous tampon call is the subject of The Crown Season 5, episode 5, but shows it’s not exactly what the tabloids reported.
West and historian Annie Sulzberger addressed “Tampongate” on The Crown: The Official Podcast episode released Nov. 18. They explained how The Crown Season 5 attempted to “rehabilitate” the scandal.
What was ‘Tampongate’?
During a phone sex call, Prince Charles told Parker Bowles he wanted to be reincarnated as her tampon. That call leaked and the British tabloids ran with it. Saturday Night Live even did a sketch where they put Dana Carvey’s head on a tampon. In recreating the tampon phone call for The Crown, West said he developed sympathy for the real life subjects involved.
“Just imagine what that’s like, how violating that is and how if any one of us had any intimate conversation transcribed into the Mirror newspaper,” West told The Crown: The Official Podcast. “It would be utterly soul destroying. It would destroy you. What we found in the playing was the warmth and the tenderness, how that was a real violation of that and how awful that must’ve felt.”
West realized that Prince Charles’ tampon line was his attempt at naughty sex talk. His utter failure actually makes him seem more innocent.
“When you see it, Camilla’s saying saucy things about knickers and stuff and he keeps saying really not saucy things,” West said. “But it’s sort of sweet. It’s quite hard and awkward.”
Rehabilitating Prince Charles’ tampon line on ‘The Crown’ Season 5
The Crown’s historical advisor Sulzberger explained how a ham radio hobbyist received the phone call from primitive cell phone signals. When he recognized the voice of Prince Charles, he recorded it and struck gold as it were.
“It’s likely that if Charles had just spoken on a landline, none of this would’ve happened,” Sulzberger said. “The speech becomes the longing, slightly sexual conversation that we know it to be. The newspapers chose to cut away a lot of things and just focus on oh my God, I can’t believe he said he wants to be a tampon. But the mention of a tampon, which is the most famous section of that speech, is so different when you hear the whole context.”
Sulzberger said The Crown Season 5 didn’t shy away from the most infamous portion of the phone sex transcript, but Peter Morgan‘s script showed the more accurate context.
“I’m actually very proud of us for sticking to our guns and putting this in the show,” Sulzberger said “We’re actually trying to rehabilitate that moment. That comes after very loving longing conversation where they start to joke. It’s just a funny moment between two very in love people who are missing each other. That context, when you read the whole thing, and we do a lot of it, it just becomes an incredibly different tone to that section.”
The legacy of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles’ phone sex
It’s unlikely The Crown Season 5 will erase the legacy of “Tampongate.” West just hopes that it changes some hearts and minds about the stories they heard in the ‘90s.
I remember it really well and probably much like everyone else as being a rather tawdry, deeply embarrassing, sleazy thing. On set, we had the tabloid papers at that time. Every single one of them publishes a transcript of the whole thing. What was really extraordinary was, because a few people have asked me, ‘You’re not going to do tampongate, are you?’ The Italians still call Prince Charles a principe tamponiti, little tampon prince. This is what he’s known for. What became apparent in the playing of it, and the way Peter’s written it, although Peter pretty much just transcribed what was said, you suddenly saw it from their point of view as this middle aged couple deeply in love having the whole world listen to an intimate phone conversation.
Dominic West, The Crown: The Official Podcast, 11/18/22
