Windsors Take New York! Chatting with the KING CHARLES III Company on Opening Night!

Te Teum laudamus, Te Dominum confitemum, Te Eternum, Patrem Omnis Terra veneratum

For me, for me, for me, for me, for me, for me, for me, for me, for me, for me, for me, for me

First of all, welcome to Broadway. How does it feel? It feels incredible

There's a lot of lights and there's a lot of loudness. and people seem really buzzy and happy and that's incredible

And I'm just sort of amazed that this play has come all the way here. It's incredible

At what point during the process did you arrive here in New York? Was it the early part of rehearsal

I came here for, we rehearsed in the UK, so I came here for the last dress rehearsal and the first preview

So what was it like for you? I mean, the New York audiences have been wonderful. I mean, I was there yesterday

They were riveted, understanding everything about how Parliament runs and everything else

What's blown you away the most about how the audience has, you know, received the play here

Well, I sort of made some changes. I changed some references and some of them we kept

but actually what was interesting is in previews, we found the audience totally got it

They totally listened, totally got all the references and a lot of them

we just put back as they were because I think, you know, actually it's a British play

and an American audience doesn't want us to Americanize it or change it

They want to learn about Britain. So it's pretty much the same play

there's a couple of little changes but but the audiences seem to really be listening and loving

it which is fantastic it feels like uh this play's been an incredible journey and obviously it's a

sort of pinnacle to hopefully we'll get crowned here but we'll see but yeah no i felt the cast

did really really well and it's a wonderful wonderful play so i'm very pleased you know

we talked about this at that first day you had all arrived in new york this is such an electrifying

play and i love where it goes yeah i mean i guess i think people in the first scene and they laugh so much and it feels really fun And it lovely sitting there going this is going to get quite emotional as we go on

And yeah, I think particularly, I think the measure of any play is it's great scenes

I mean, although I hope the whole play is great, but I think that's particularly that scene between Prince Charles and Prince William or King Charles and Prince William is a really, really wonderful scene

let's talk about Mike's play when you first got this play when you read it why you wanted to direct

it well I'd done I'd worked with Mike before and so I just really love him as a man and

you know I think as a director you invest in writers you know and if they write something

then it's a privilege to direct it but but also I you know I had a background in doing Shakespeare

in England and he had actually seen a film of Richard II I'd done with Ben Whishaw for the BBC

and I think it inspired him a bit. And so he, you know, I think writers do sometimes write for theatres and directors

I think he thought, as a Shakespearean, as it were, that maybe I would be the right person for it

It vindicates the vision that Stuart Thompson's Sonja Friedman had. This play, I feel, has worked with a Broadway audience, a New York audience

and I'm so happy that that's borne out because it was, it wasn't a given

It was no guarantee that people here would relate to a debate about constitutional monarchy

So I think that it's very heartwarming that they connect with the debate

But as I said, I think family is family and everybody will find in common a father-son, step-family kind of connection

And I think the play is so beautifully written. It allows you to balance that inner domestic drama against the, if you like, the larger public one that's going on

That's my hope. And I felt that throughout the previews, not just tonight

I felt, as you said, if you were at the matinee yesterday, I thought it was a terrific audience, that

Very knowing. I don think people people get meaning without literalism don they they can you using all of your senses in the theatre not just things spelled out

I found it a very receptive, bright audience. I love where it goes, and you think it's going to go one way

and then it goes into a totally different direction. It must be so great to play

Well, it is, and especially for Prince Harry, because if you drew a graph of his journey through the play

It's like he's down, he's up, he's down again, he's sort of in the middle, and then it's dreadful, and then it's wonderful

No, it's a real rollercoaster, and I think we know it so well, but as I said, the freshness is the thing

We've got to always remember that the audience doesn't know what's coming next, and it's a page-turner in the old-fashioned sense, I guess, yeah

Playing Harry, how cool is that? Yeah, it's great. He's a very popular guy

and he's done a lot of work for me, you know. It's wonderful playing him

And I think the play gives him comedy, tragedy, problems to solve

And so it's not just playing Harry. It's a proper part in that respect. It's a great dramatic role

London and New York are probably pretty much... We're getting closer and closer together, I think, in terms of sensibilities

And so, yeah, they didn't need to change anything. You were electrifying to watch on stage

What is it like taking on the role of Kate? Well, it's very fun

A lot of roles I've played before have been slightly damaged characters

and it's wonderful to play a survivor, to play someone who has so much joy in her life

Not to give anything away, when you watch the play, you think it's going to go one way, and then it turns in a totally other wonderful direction

It must be really great playing that as an actress. Oh, God, I really, really love that, exactly

I started watching House of Cards during rehearsals for this, and it's so fun the second half to do that sort of political drama

step into the West Wing or suddenly the play does sort of swing

into this very fast-paced sort of political thriller. It's so fun. What has the last few weeks

been like for you with putting the play together for Dior? They've been terrific, actually

One of the things I've really enjoyed doing, and we've done this play an awful lot of times and we all love it so much

and there's always so much more to investigate. So we've had a good three weeks now to just really investigate that with a new audience You know like the wonderful thing about theatre is it a contract It a relationship between the actors on the stage and the audience Why it different every night live wonderful

It's a art form and an entertainment medium unlike any other. It's just wonderful like that

And so finding out what that chemistry is between the audiences and the audience and

the performers is just a wonderful thing. And enjoying that has been a real thrill and pleasure

One of the very fun things we've been doing is we didn't Americanize anything, but we

started off making things a lot more simple and a lot clearer because in the

fear that American audiences may not connect with stuff. And over the three and a half weeks where we've been previewing, we basically we've been

putting the show back to how it was more originally and realizing that the show as was, you know, it's completely translatable. American audiences are

clever, clever, wonderful people and they can understand, they can see. And it's been wonderful watching almost all of the changes get put back to how

they were originally. Audiences here have been, I think, more attentive than

English audiences, they have really listened to this play and it repays great rewards. It's a

wonderful, wonderful play. The language of the play is just superb, clever. So I was going to

ask you when you first read Mike Bartlett's play, what you loved about it and his words. Well

Rupert said to me, the director, Rupert said, it's in blank verse. You may not like that. Well

I've done lots of Shakespeare. I love blank verse. So that pleased me because you can do things if

the language is in verse that you can't if it's in prose you can take it to shakespearean levels

because the language matches so that's a phenomenal achievement of mike's and his language is not

shakespearean but it's very very clever it's modern blank verse it's it's it's just it's just

brilliant um so it makes things available to you as an actor when i read the play first of all i

thought it would be 10 minutes of royal fun and then go i don't know where it would go but of

Of course, ten minutes into our play, Charles decides to defend the freedom of the press

And you go, wow, there's a play here. It's an amazing piece of writing

God save the king! God save the king