The near future is the setting of Mike Bartlett’s provocative “King Charles III.” The 2015 play has been adapted for television and is airing Sunday on PBS’s “Masterpiece.”
Written in iambic pentameter, the story imagines Prince Charles’ ascension to the British throne following Queen Elizabeth II’s death.
“He’s been in the waiting room all his life,” noted Tim Pigott-Smith, who plays the prince in “King Charles III.”
Sadly, Pigott-Smith, an acclaimed British actor, passed away last month at age 70. He talked to us for this story when he was in Pasadena for the Television Critics Association press tour in January, and he was an absolute gentleman — gracious and keenly observant during the interview.
At the time of his death, Pigott-Smith and his wife, actress Pamela Miles, had been preparing to play Willy and Linda Loman in a production of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.”
While having had a number of notable successes in his career — Pigott-Smith preferred working on stage — playing Charles became a capstone to his fine career.
His performances in the play’s London and New York runs had brought him nominations for Olivier and Tony awards. Though he worked steadily since he left the Bristol Old Vic theater school as a young man in the late 1960s, it was his riveting turn as a repressed British officer in the lavish 1984 miniseries “The Jewel in the Crown,” set in the dying days of the British Raj, that people most often recognized him for.
“That’s the calling card, isn’t it?” he said with a smile about the role for which he won a British Academy of Film and Television Arts, or BAFTA, award.
After such a long career, “King Charles III” — a challenging and timely inquiry into the role the British monarchy — finally brought the special attention the greatly admired actor deserved.
Bartlett’s play does not imagine Charles merely taking a seat on the throne to keep it warm for his son William. While British monarchs have little power, they still can call for a new Parliament and the new king triggers a full-blown political crisis in the country after refusing to sign a new law and dissolving Parliament.
So in the play’s world, a tank gets parked outside Buckingham Palace, and the ghost of Diana, Princess of Wales, roams the palace. Meanwhile, as Prince William wavers over what to do, his tough-minded wife, Kate (Charlotte Reilly), though born a commoner, shows she’s the one who has the royal mettle to prevent a catastrophe.
Prince Charles had always been part of Pigott-Smith’s consciousness throughout his life.
“I had the privilege of meeting him once,” remembered the actor who was awarded an Order of the British Empire, or OBE, for his services to drama earlier this year. “He was charming and easy to talk to, but that’s his public face. The Royals are very skilled in talking to people and being nice, but goodness knows what he is really like.”
Though he did enormous research for the role, Pigott-Smith still found the prince a mystery. “I suspect he is a sensitive man and has a streak of stubbornness, both of those characteristics are on display in the play.”
The actor points to the “black spider” memos — letters so-called because of the prince’s distinctive handwriting style — written by Charles to British government ministers and politicians over the years. By law, the British monarch is supposed to be politically neutral.
“He notoriously writes letters lobbying Parliament, usually for green causes,” noted the actor. “There are quite a lot of people who resent that, because they say we pay for him and isn’t elected so he shouldn’t have a voice.”
The play kicks off when Charles decides to withhold his signature from a law passed by Parliament that would create restrictions on the press. Pigott-Smith quickly observes that while no one knows just what Charles’ views on freedom of speech are, many see the prince as “an old-fashioned liberal veering a bit towards the right.”
“So when he says in the play, ‘I’m really sorry, but you can’t compromise on this. I’m going to put my foot down,’ ” said the actor. “That seems to be true to his character, and I think that rings true to the audience.”
The goal in the play was not to do an impersonation of Charles. Instead, Pigott-Smith chose to incorporate a few characteristics of the prince like the way he held his hands.
“I think what happens increasingly in the course of the evening is that people superimposed their image of him on me,” said the actor, “because when I came out of the theater, people would say, ‘You look so like him,’ when, actually, I don’t, but I think it worked that way on their imagination.”
Bartlett’s use of iambic pentameter more than being a nod to Shakespeare, also gives the play a tragic tone.
“I think Charles is judged harshly,” said Pigott-Smith. “People blame him for what happened to Diana, but who knows in a complicated situation … I suspect the tragedy of his life was that he didn’t marry Camilla right off.”
Pigott-Smith wasn’t convinced Charles will even take the crown, especially if his mother — like her mother — lives to be more than 100. “That would make him close to 80.”
The actor believes Britain will have to find a new model for the monarchy. “I think William and Kate will provide that as it happens in our play.”
Still, if Charles does take the throne, “I think he really cares about the country and could be a really constructive and good King,” said Pigott-Smith.
