Dominic West has responded to claims he was “too handsome” to play King Charles in ‘The Crown’.
The actor plays the new monarch when he was Prince of Wales in the latest season of the hit Netflix drama, but many viewers have complained the 53-year-old telly star doesn’t look much like the royal and is too good looking to pass as a younger version of Charles.
However, West isn’t letting the criticism get him down. He was asked about the comments during an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on Tuesday, and replied: “Well thank you very much. I’ve had worse criticisms.”
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Kimmel asked the actor if he felt nervous playing the man who is now the king, saying: “Does that make you at all nervous seeing as he could have you beheaded if he wants to, he’s the king?”
West replied: “Right, yeah, well, no he can’t. I mean, they’ve sort of tried. They’re having a go. This was his sort of nadir of his whole life.”
The actor said he felt a huge responsibility playing the royal during such a difficult time of his life as he struggled with the breakdown of his marriage to the late Diana, Princess of Wales.
He said: “You see pictures of him then and video and stuff and he’s very, very sad and that’s quite a responsibility taking that on.”
During the show, West recreated the scene from “The Crown” in which Charles is seen break-dancing at a charity event in 1985 and he admitted it was harder to dance badly than well.
He said: “Charles is quite proud of his dancing, he does a lot of Scottish dancing.
“The difficulty is there’s no rhythm, it’s completely ‘arhythmic’, so you can’t sort of, the trouble I found is the music is playing (and) you get too much into the rhythm which is a fatal mistake.
“It’s much harder to dance out of time … he does it brilliantly.”
