Getting dressed with The Crown's Luther Ford

NOT MANY actors can attribute landing a breakthrough role from a simple WhatsApp message, but Luther Ford is the exception.

“My brother’s girlfriend sent an open casting call from The Crown for Prince Harry on our group chat, with the message: ‘It doesn’t hurt to try’. I kind of did it on a whim because, I mean, it’s such a prestigious show and I just thought, why not? Then I got it, and it was very confusing, and exciting and daunting.”

Now, the 23-year-old is speaking to me over the phone ahead of the show’s premiere in Oslo, which had 778,000 households watching the new season’s first episode within the first three days of launch. It’s the same show that’s become Netflix’s crown jewels, consistently enticing audiences for its fact-turned-fictional depiction of the royals’ lives over the last century. The same show where Ford – alongside co-stars Ed McVey and Meg Bellamy, who were also plucked out of near obscurity – brings to life Harry and his relationship with his brother, the future heir to the throne. Hardly an easy task for hardened professionals, let alone a rookie.

“Paul said, I just want him to sound like a cop, I want him to sound like a cop,” Key says, pouring himself black tea in a London hotel room and trying to shake off the red-eye flight that got him here. He’s a gently intense presence, eyes alternately wide and engaging or crinkled in a chuckle. “Not a police officer: a cop.”

Key went a bit deeper though. “What was really important for me to hook in was that there’s this kind of toughness to the way he speaks, but really what’s going on is that he knows that he’s a flawed man. He’s got some issues, you know? He knows that he’s got an addiction problem, and he tries to hide it, and he’s trying to fight it and he just can’t help himself.”

Saying yes to King was a formality, “knowing that I’m going to be working with this guy, who actually, I think is a genius”. Key has been a fan since long before King had done the Paddington films, and was directing the more esoteric end of British sitcoms in the noughties.

“You think about The Mighty Boosh,” Key says. “There’s still something super magical about that work, as there is with Paddington, as there is with Wonka.”

Roald Dahl’s stories were a constant at school, and he remembers being deeply and lastingly amazed-slash-freaked-out by the image of Violet Beauregard gradually turning into a gigantic blueberry. “And I think some of that has to do with the fact that Roald Dahl has this undying respect for children. His material leans toward the dark. And because he does that, he’s showing children that he thinks that they can handle it.”

Ford was studying when he got the go-ahead, undertaking a film production course at college that would eventually see him behind the camera rather than in front of it. He describes himself as being “naïve” during the audition process, happy to be asked for a call back without even thinking about potentially getting the job. That feeling of detachment translated into how he played his character.

“One of the things that Peter Morgan [the show’s creator and writer] explores is Harry feeling like the black sheep of the family, and I think my total lack of experience was quite fitting,” he says earnestly, going on to list the acting heavyweights that he worked alongside, including Dominic West as Prince Charles. “I didn’t feel like I fit in, not in a bad way, but just in a realistic way. I leaned into that and accepted my position as a total newcomer.”

Prep was a lot more extensive post-audition, where the show’s research team sent him books, documentaries and articles for him to “revise”. A dialect coach helped Ford perfect the RP accent, while a movement coach, with the help of others – “I met with a Marine who taught me how to march. There were no military scenes within the show, but it was about understanding posture.” – helped Ford go from a student to sought-after prince.

“You’re trying to convey an essence, rather than do an impression,” he explains. “You’re playing someone who is world renowned and who has a lot going on, but the key is that you have to zone that all out. It doesn’t relate to what we’re doing in terms of the timeline, but also it’s just unhelpful. There’s so much media that surrounds these figures that at some point, you have to stop looking into it and just trust that you’re on the right path.”