Meg Bellamy speaks to Glass about playing Kate Middleton in The Crown, a role she landed fresh out of school with no professional experience
From Winter Issue 56
“I thought it was going to be hugely intimidating”, Meg Bellamy begins as we jump on our Zoom call after her cover shoot. Ironically, she’s speaking about Dior and not her breakthrough role as Kate Middleton in Netflix’s sixth and final season of The Crown.
Photographer: Buzz White
Bellamy is still naive to the fact that playing the Princess of Wales might just be the part that launches her into stardom and she’s taking it one day at a time. Today, she’s overwhelmed by the clothes she is wearing. “It was amazing to play around with bolder outfits,” Bellamy says, excitedly recalling her moments on set. “It felt like a character shoot, and you lose the intimidation that comes along with the Dior name. It’s theatrical with them”.
Rightfully so. After all, the brand has dressed both royals and cinema royalty. Just take Princess Diana – her love affair with Christian Dior coincided with a new sense of freedom, which she found in her fashion choices and then culminated with the Lady Dior bag.
It’s the fairy godmother of the film industry, taking young actresses under its wing and offering them a platform to become stars. They’ve done so for decades with the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Marion Cotillard and Charlize Theron, to name but a few. So, Bellamy is rightfully intimidated.
Photographer: Buzz White
At only 20 years of age, the actress is about to take on a heavy mantle, walking straight out of school and into Kate Middleton’s shoes, Bellamy seems unaware of what’s about to come her way. After all, at the time of the interview, the show isn’t even out yet.
With Netflix keeping The Crown under iron-clad NDAs, very little is known about the plotline. Thus far, the only giveaway we have is that the Berkshire native will portray Middleton during her years at St Andrew’s University between 2001 and 2005, when her relationship with Prince William (played by Ed McVey) started.
Bellamy, who earned an A* for drama, certainly looks the part, given that she and Middleton resemble each other. She studied at St Crispin’s School in Wokingham, not too far from the village where Kate lived with her family as a girl. “I also played netball in school,” Bellamy adds, pointing out another coincidence.
Photographer: Buzz White
First aired in 2016, The Crown has launched the careers of several of Britain’s most respected young actors, thanks to casting directors Nina Gold and Robert Sterne who seem to have the knack of finding obscure talent capable of giving right royal performances on screen.
Take Emma Corrin, who joined the series as Princess Diana not long after leaving Cambridge University with just a few minor parts to their name. Speaking to Glass in 2020, Corrin recalls their way of managing the pressure of becoming a part of The Crown universe: “I think I realised quite quickly that if I were to do this any justice, I was going to have to come to terms with that and put it to one side. I needed to shut off all the noise that was saying, this is huge. It’s her, how are you going to do this? What will people think? It was terrifying and it’s not conducive to good work.”
Photographer: Buzz White
Bellamy is well aware of the need to get a proper grasp of Kate Middleton and, like Corrin, to do justice to a popular public figure. What was her way into her landscape? “I would always watch and study how she spoke, how she moved, and every gesture that she made,” Bellamy explains.
“When you have the research paired with the movement and vocal coach, [movement, Polly Bennett; vocal, William Conacher], Kate comes to life. They are amazing and an encyclopaedia of information and skills. They helped me get a sense of her as a 3D character.”
Photographer: Buzz White
To be fair, the Princess of Wales has always been a relatable royal. Her public life never reflected the fact that she was thrown into the chaos of the monarchy purely by absurd coincidence. Her demeanour is always dignified and speaks volumes about the way she views her public responsibilities. Bellamy agrees. For her, she was an ordinary girl who happened to marry a prince.
“I think loads of people can find familiar qualities in Kate because she really was just a relatively normal girl. She grew up sporty, liked school, had lots of friends, went to university and fell in love. It’s kind of nice to play that layer because if you think you’re playing Kate Middleton, you’d be playing this royal. There’s a lot of pressure that comes with that. The reality is much simpler.”
Photographer: Buzz White
But how do you leave Kate Middleton at home? How do you shake off her character and go back to mundanity, while maintaining some level of sanity? Bellamy’s method shows clearly why [she] did so well in drama at school. “I had to stop myself from watching her afterwards because I’d still be in ‘study her’ mode and it would almost be stressful,” the actress recalls.
“I’d see something that she did, like a mannerism and be like, ‘Ah, did I do that in the show? Did I think about that?’ And you don’t want to learn new things because you have to wipe your hands of it and be like—I’ve done everything I can because filming’s over.”
Bellamy continues, “[With] The Crown, I stopped intensively looking at her after her university years. I found it almost unhelpful to know intently how she felt in each stage afterwards because, of course, she wouldn’t know at the time that I was playing her that she would eventually marry William. I was more childhood-focused, I wanted to get a kind of foundation of her rather than knowing what would happen in the future.”
Photographer: Buzz White
What’s been her learning curve, though? Being thrown into a massive production of a popular public figure has left its marks. School’s over. And Bellamy knows it. “For a while, I felt like I needed to know every technique, and needed to know everyone’s method of acting while having a very specific way of doing it,” she says.
“You needed five notebooks full of notes about every detail of their lives, but often, if you have so much of that, it’s hard to leave it at the door when you’re doing the scene and it can maybe restrict you when it comes to playing on the day. Something that I found with The Crown is the power of just doing it with the person in the scene and seeing what happens. Responding to them, you know, listening and reacting.”
Photographer: Buzz White
With chemistry at the forefront of her attention, the young actress knows how to play ball. After all, acting is a game of tennis and not squash. “You can’t necessarily just play your own game. If you know exactly how you are going to say a line, how can you possibly be acting with the other person? Because if they do something different and you respond the exact same, you’re not really listening. It’s a one-man show.”
What’s next for Bellamy? She shows candour, potential and an angelic demeanour that is worthy of a princess. But will she make the move from fictional royalty to cinema royalty? Only time will tell.
