Josh O’Connor Struggled With ‘The Crown’ Fame: ‘It Was a F–ked-Up Time’

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, even if only for a Netflix series. Josh O’Connor says his role in the third and fourth seasons of The Crown — in which he played Prince Charles, the future King of the United Kingdom — took a toll on his personal life.

“It was a f–ked-up time. I found it so impactful, people stopping me,” he says in a new GQ profile, explaining that he found himself photographed in public and needled for his opinions about the real-life royals. “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.”

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In fact, O’Connor was reluctant to even audition for The Crown — he’d prefer the U.K. to be a republic instead of a monarchy — until he read a Season 3 scene in which the fictionalized Charles realizes his life can’t have meaning until the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.

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O’Connor, who won Lead Actor in a Drama Series Emmy Award for his performance in The Crown, also tells GQ he didn’t watch the real Charles’ coronation this May. But the 33-year-old felt “really happy” for the man he portrayed on screen, he says, “because it must feel like his whole life has led to that moment.”

He adds, “I’m sure it’s the icing on the cake to put a really expensive hat on in a nice cathedral.”

Since ending his time on The Crown in 2020, O’Connor starred opposite his TV mom, Olivia Colman, in the 2021 film Mothering Sunday, and he joined Jessie Buckley in a TV movie adaptation of Romeo and Juliet that same year. Coming up, he’ll costar with Mike Faist and Zendaya in the comedy-drama film Challengers and share the screen with Kate Winslet and Alexander Skarsgård in the biopic film Lee.

The Crown Season 6, TBD, Netflix