The juicy scandals of the royal family will surely be featured in the upcoming season of “The Crown,” including one very tawdry moment.
The notorious phone call between now-King Charles and his future Queen Consort-wife, Camilla Parker Bowles, involving one delicately placed tampon, will be presented in Season 5 of the hit Netflix show after all.
Dominic West — who is taking over actor Josh O’Connor’s role in “The Crown” as Charles — spilled the tea that the incident will indeed be shown on-screen.
“I remember thinking it was something so sordid and deeply, deeply embarrassing [at the time],” West, 53, told Entertainment Weekly.
“The Affair” star went on, “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’ attention to it, that they printed it out verbatim, and you could call a number and listen to the actual tape,” West said. “I think it made me extremely sympathetic towards the two of them and what they’d gone through.”
The “Tampongate” incident resurfaced in 1993 when a recording of a phone call between the two was published in the press. It was then that Charles’ extramarital affairs against then-wife Princess Diana were revealed to the world.
While transcripts of the call were first revealed in ’93, the conversation actually took place in 1989, and Charles had been secretly recorded.
The talk included the former Prince of Wales telling Camilla, “I’ll just live inside your trousers or something. It would be much easier.”
“What are you going to turn into, a pair of knickers?” Camilla jokingly responded. “Oh, you’re going to come back as a pair of knickers.”
Charles then said, “Or, God forbid, a Tampax. Just my luck!”
O’Connor previously noted that the event would not be portrayed on the show. He appeared on SirusXM’s “EW Live” in May 2020, saying, “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.”
He added, “Unfortunately all the fans of ‘Tampongate’ will be very disappointed.”
Season five of “The Crown” will premiere on Nov. 9.