Meg Bellamy – who plays a teen Kate Middleton in the final episodes of The Crown – has revealed she was working at Legoland when she found out she’d bagged the role.
The actress, 20, has told the Sunday Times she was working as a mascot at the Windsor attraction when she got the call with the good news.
She said: “I felt my phone ringing in my pocket and knew it was [producer of the show] Kate [Bone] because I’d been expecting her call for days...
“But I couldn't answer it because I was working at Legoland, in character! Eventually I got out of my costume and rushed to the delivery parking lot, which is quite scuzzy, all the delivery lorries are beeping and reversing in, to phone her back...
“And I’m on the kerb, trying to hear her. It was not glamorous. Then I had to go back into Legoland and deal with customer complaints like nothing had happened.”
Bellamy had no acting experience before scooping the role in the wildly successful Netflix show.
She applied for the role after seeing a tweet on The Crown’s official Twitter account, calling for budding actors to apply.
She was encouraged by her neighbour to send in an application video to producers – as Bellamy believed she looked nothing like the future royal in her younger years.
Bellamy said: “I’d loved watching the show, so when the casting call came out, applying was a no-brainer. Watching it, I never thought I’d be in it one day. I never knew how present they would go, so I didn’t know Kate Middleton would be an option.”
It comes as Bellamy’s co-star Ed McVey – who plays Prince William – said the depiction of Kate Middleton’s university fashion show and Charles’ wedding to Camilla were both “beautiful moments” in the final instalment of The Crown.
McVey also said the scene where William and Harry step out onto the balcony during the Queen’s Golden Jubilee was a “big tipping point” and will be an “interesting event” for viewers to watch – while also handpicking Kate’s catwalk scene as a showstopper.
“People are going to love it, it looks amazing and obviously Meg [Bellamy] does an incredible job… that’s going to be an amazing moment,” he said about the moment often referred to as the one when William first became smitten with Kate.
Bellamy added that she was “a bit apprehensive” about portraying the scene to begin with.
“…Purely because it was the first time I had really felt like I was reliving a key event that I remembered seeing in the news, but on the day itself it was completely different to what I thought, it was amazing,” she said.
Bellamy said they had “Kylie Minogue blasting through the speakers” while the crowd cheered “at the top of their lungs” during filming.
“So it was a really liberating experience and it was so great for the self esteem and I had such fun,” the actress said.
“It was amazing and I was really nervous for it so that was a relief and it was one of my favourite days to film for sure.”
The next, and final, instalment of The Crown will be released on December 14.
