King Charles III smooths back his hair; it’s dyed dark as it once was, its waves matching the other one’s waves. Looking in the dressing room mirror, he considers his close-set blue eyes. “Do you think I look like him?” he asks the makeup artist. She looks around uncertainly. “Of course, Your Majesty. I mean, Dom.”
“It’s only fair,” King Charles III had said to the casting directors, who, having also cast The Crown, agreed that it was, and felt unable to refuse their king. And now the king is playing Dominic West in this biopic about the actor’s life, much to everyone’s dismay.
Before his first shoot day, the king feels a flutter, the merest flutter, of a feeling it takes him a moment to name as self-doubt. But, he reassures himself, he and Dominic West have common ground. They were both avid fox hunters, until the sport was banned. They both have charitable commitments. They both are used to being in front of cameras. They both have known the love of glamorous women. They both look good in suits. This will be enough to sustain him.
He begins at the beginning: Dominic West spent a gap year as a cattle herder in Argentina. King Charles III, who was not shabby at polo and participated in many royal parades on horseback wearing a cylindrical black bearskin hat, tries his best. It’s a baffling job, but baffling in a way that feels familiar: the Argentinian cows seem not to want to be herded; indeed, they seem ambivalent about being ruled at all.
“’Bah-humbug’? You don’t mean that, uncle,” he says to his uncle Scrooge, who is refusing to come to his house for dinner. Who is so cold and ungenerous. King Charles II drops his head into his thick-fingered hands, thinking of his mother.
He’s playing Dominic West playing steel dragon guitarist Kirk Cuddy in Rock Star, and the director seems concerned. “Don’t worry. I’m a musician, too,” says King Charles III. He once played the cello in the University orchestra. And as soon as he puts on the long and lavishly curled periwig, he feels just like King Charles II, “The Merry Monarch,” whose reign ended the Puritan era, a bit of history he explains to the crew in detail. He does not want the role to end.
Especially once he realizes where he’s going. A detective, he fights crime in Baltimore. His American accent sounds a little Welsh. He wears a kilt. But it works: the drug dealers see him coming and laugh so hard they put down their guns. “Aw, shit. Aw, man.” Another win for the good guys.
Theron: the Spartan politician in The 300. King Charles III is right at home, having gone to more than one toga party at Trinity.
It is the style of the serial killer that discomfits the king; the fuzzy hair, the outdoor vest over the ugly sweater which do exactly to his body what his grumbly Gloucester accent does to his voice.
He doesn’t feel right again until he’s Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. Then, he feels right, very, very right, like an “h” restored to its rightful place at the beginning of a word.
Neither is the news reporter a stretch. King Charles III once delivered the weather for BBC Scotland; clouds were everywhere. It was cold, wet, and windy. A chance of snow over Balmoral… he’d joked that his viewers were doubtless glad this wasn’t a bank holiday, and everyone on set with him that day had laughed, and he had been pleased with himself for knowing about bank holidays and knowing that people wanted it to be sunny when they had one. He has always been in tune with his subjects. “Dom? Earth to Dom?” the director prods.
Getting into character as a lady’s man, King Charles III whispers in his blond co-star’s ear, “If you come back to my place, I’ll let you hold my teddy bear. I’ll let you use the custom-made toilet seat I take with me everywhere.” He goes into a kind of trance, thinking about the many sashes he has for many different occasions. “I’ll sit on my lion’s throne for you wearing a sash and nothing else.” “Cut,” says the director, looking at the blond actress’s face.
Les Miserables. King Charles III studies the script, scoffs. He says, “The French would put someone in jail for stealing bread to feed his sister’s starving children.”
A show about an affair? King Charles III thinks this is a little too on the nose, and says so as his nose is being powdered. He won’t do it. He looks at the day’s shooting schedule, crumples it, throws it toward the trash, misses. No one is there to pick it up. He leaves it.
Downton Abbey: A New Era, is more like it. Perhaps I should buy the Abbey, he thinks…
At the premiere, on the red carpet outside the theater, he recognizes the blond actress; she’s looking at him—amused by something—but what? He nods to the luminaries in formal dress around him; they nod at him, nods between equals. No: what is he saying? These are pretenders. He is the only one here with a kingdom of his own; its land is his, and its surrounding seabed. He has left it unhelmed for longer than he ought; he has gotten lost somehow. The blond actress is laughing with someone. “Let’s just say, he’s not Dom,” he thinks he hears her say. No, he’s not Dom. He’s Charles the Third, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of His other Realms and Territories, King, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, and he’s had enough of showbiz. He’s going home.