Dominic West has spoken about his "deep sense of sympathy" for the then Prince of Wales during the infamous 'Tampongate' scandal with Camilla Parker Bowles while filming in highly-anticipated fifth season of The Crown.
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.
West plays Charles, now the King, in the fifth series of the Emmy award-winning Netflix show, which will portray the infamous scene "sympathetically" according to reports.
The British actor also revealed his understanding of the incident has changed since filming the storyline.
He said: "In the playing of it, because Olivia Williams is so magnificent, and because I have such a deep sense of sympathy with Charles, it’s much simpler than we thought at the time, or that the papers made out or that the history around it made out.
"It just strikes you as being a horrible breach of privacy that no one should have to suffer.
"If any one of us had our intimate phone conversations reproduced verbatim in every newspaper in the world, imagine what that’s like. Imagine how awful that is.
"My memory of it is that it was sort of filthy and dirty and really embarrassing but actually in the playing of it, it was much more like two middle-aged lovers being sweet to each other."
West added: "In many ways Charles had witnessed how his position had destroyed Diana, and he was having to see the same thing happen to Camilla and I think that’s the hardest part of being the Prince of Wales."
The Wire star reflected on how screenwriter Peter Morgan tried to portray the royal as he attempted to rebuild his reputation with the public, including his interview with Jonathan Dimbleby.
West said: "I think what Peter (Morgan) was interested in, and I think what comes across so well in his scripts about this time, is how there was nothing Charles could do, no PR stunt he could pull, no PR adviser who was going to make his position any better. He was on a losing ticket the whole time.”
He concluded: "With that one confession of adultery, he obliterated anything else good that might have come out of having had a year of cameras following him around.
"Peter was keen to show that and how he really couldn’t do anything right at the time."
Series five of The Crown lands on Netflix on November 9.
