Meg Bellamy revealed her most memorable experience filming for “The Crown” and how she relates to her character on the show. She plays Kate Middleton in season 6 part 2 of the series which premieres on Thursday, December 14.
The 21-year-old Legoland employee, who makes her acting debut in the sixth and final series of the Netflix show, shared that she was not surprised at what she learned about the new Princess of Wales. She highlighted Kate’s normal upbringing with her parents Carole and Michael Middleton, and her siblings Pippa and James in Bucklebury, Berkshire.
Bellamy told People: “It’s not necessarily surprising what I learned about Kate because she didn’t grow up in this royal household. Her roots are roots that people can really connect to because she went to school and had a very supportive family and went to university.”
She added: “And I think that’s pretty traditional. I think that’s what people really love about her — is her kind of approachability and the way she connects with people. I think that makes sense in the research that I found about her childhood.”
As for filming “The Crown,” the actress admitted that she “really liked filming in St. Andrew’s” where Prince William and Kate Middleton first met. She said that “there were a lot of special days there” and remembered her favourite memory was that of doing the “fake rain scene” using a rain machine.
She recalled: “But to make it look like it’s really raining on camera, it has to be like torrential tropical rain. We were going again and again and again and resetting and there was a lot of crowds there that day, and it was just a lot, but a real laugh to just be just walking up and down the street soaked.”
Bellamy previously admitted to feeling the “responsibility” and the “pressure” of portraying Kate Middleton in “The Crown” season 6. She admitted to have done “a lot of research” to give justice to her character given that the show is based on the royal family. She said she had to tune out the gossip and focused on what showrunner Peter Morgan and the directors have prepared instead.
She explained: “But it can just be noise a lot of the time because you don’t know what’s true and you have to take everything with a pinch of salt. It’s very nice to strip that back and just have the script and that interpretation and have conversations with the directors and the people that you are producing this show with. That was a good element to the research.”
Bellamy called it an honour to have been a part of the sixth and final season of “The Crown”. She said that it has been “lovely in many ways” sharing: “I think something that was surprisingly nice for me was you’re coming in at the end and it’s such an immense privilege, but you are such a small part of this huge puzzle.”
She added: “What was really special for me was watching the producers and people that have been on this for 10 years wrap up their baby, essentially, and say goodbye to people and characters that they have worked on. And it’s really moving and very rewarding if they kind of like what you’re doing as well.”
Bellamy is the only actress to portray Kate Middleton on “The Crown”. The show has seen different actors and actresses portray Prince William, Prince Harry, Princess Diana, Queen Elizabeth II, then-Prince Charles, and more. Part 2 of season 6 of “The Crown” will take viewers to the early 2000s and reenact Prince William (played by 24-year-old newcomer Ed McVey) and Kate Middleton’s love story, which began in college at St. Andrew’s.
