The Crown bosses have reportedly confirmed the hit Netflix royal drama will show Charles and Camilla’s “tampongate,” but will do so “sympathetically”.
The scandal will be shown in the highly anticipated upcoming fifth season, but it will be shown as a “moment between two young lovers”.
The now-King’s infamous phone call with the now-Queen Consort in 1989 was recorded by an amateur radio fan who claimed to have come across their private conversation while moving between audio channels.
A transcript of a bedtime conversation between Prince Charles and Camilla was published just a month after Charles and Princess Diana announced their official split.
In it, Charles could be heard telling Camilla he wanted to be reincarnated as a tampon so he could "live inside" her.
Recorded when the then-Prince and Princess of Wales were still married, the six-minute conversation was branded "sick" by Princess Diana.
The transcript caused shock waves throughout the Royal Family as it exposed the relationship between the then-Prince and Camilla, who at the time was married to Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles.
According to the Telegraph, the moment will be depicted "sympathetically as two young lovers," but the ”crass” decision to include it in the upcoming season has been met with controversy as some have argue it to be “bad taste”.
Josh O'Connor, who played a young Prince Charles in series three and four of the show, previously refused to film the phone call.
He told SiriusXM in 2020: "When they offered me the role, one of my first questions was – I say questions, I think it was pretty much a statement – "We are not doing the tampon phone call".
"[The Crown] was my one chance for my parents to see something [I've acted in] with no shame and there's no way I was going to scuttle that by talking about tampons on Netflix."
Series five will see Dominic West take up the mantle of playing Charles. He previously said he felt the phone call was "sordid and deeply, deeply embarrassing" but has since changed his mind.
He told Entertainment Weekly: "Looking back on it, and having to play it, what you’re conscious of is that the blame was not with these two people, two lovers, who were having a private conversation.
"What’s really [clear now] is how invasive and disgusting was the press’s attention to it, that they printed it out verbatim and you could call a number and listen to the actual tape.
"I think it made me extremely sympathetic towards the two of them and what they’d gone through."
Camilla will be played by Olivia Williams in the upcoming season, but she has also expressed her sympathy for the couple.
The co-stars both expressed their wanting to “do right” by the now King and Queen Consort.
According to the Telegraph, a spokesperson for Netflix said that The Crown "has always been presented as a drama based on historical events".
The spokesperson added that series five "will cover events that have already been widely documented by journalists, biographers and historians," the Daily Mail reported.
