The highly-anticipated part two of The Crown season six drops on Netflix this week, and the world is just about ready for Meg Bellamy – the new fashion darling who plays the Princess of Wales in her St Andrews university days, alongside Ed Mcvey, who stars as Prince William.
Over the past few weeks, as we all geared up for the final season of Peter Morgan's royal drama – of which the first part initially landed on 16 November – Meg Bellamy's face has popped up just about everywhere that mattered.
The actor caught attention on the red carpet at the London premiere of the show in a creamy Valentino column gown, as well as at the British Fashion Awards, where she wore a blazer dress with a suit and tie by Huishan Zhang. She sat front row at the Dior shows in Paris in July, and September too – with rumours abound that she's been signed as a face of the luxury French fashion house.
She will appear in The Crown as a young Kate Middleton, around the age when she and William first met at the University of St. Andrews – where they studied art history. So ahead of her big debut, what do we know about the 21-year-old chosen to play the Duchess of Cambridge… and how did she land this major career-defining role?
Bellamy was only 19 at the time she scored the role, and was then working at Legoland Windsor – which she described as “the best job ever” to The Telegraph (before she got the K.Middy gig, of course).
The former head girl at St Crispin's comprehensive school in Wokingham, Berkshire (which is super close to where Kate grew up) was selected for the part after her self-taped audition impressed producers following a call-out on social media.
Despite having no professional acting experience, Bellamy had studied amateur dramatics and film-making, scoring an A* in her drama A-level. She also has a number of school productions under her belt.
She told the newspaper: “I didn’t have an agent at the time so I was just doing everything that I could on my own, self-submitting for student films and shorts. Then in April last year, the opportunity [for The Crown] popped up on my Twitter, and at the same time my neighbour sent it to me and told me that I should go for it. She’d just seen it and she thought that I looked like Kate."
Bellamy also spoke about the long audition process and how she prepared for the role. She said: "In the first round of auditions you had to say something about yourself and tell them your height. I told them I was a red brick at Legoland – that was my fun fact. I remember looking at the picture of Kate on the brief and trying to work out exactly where she’d applied her bronzer so that I could do it exactly right, trying to unleash my inner make-up artist.
“At every audition, I just watched and watched [Kate]. Reading about her and listening to her was so important both before and during. During the time period that I play her, there’s no recording of her speaking so you have to picture her younger.”
Speaking on finally securing the royal role to Town & Country, Bellamy said she waited weeks to hear back about the auditions – and was on a 20-minute rotation as a character roaming the Legoland grounds, in costume as a snake, when she saw a voicemail from casting associate Kate Bone. As soon as her shift was over, she listened to the message: “Oh Meg, I think your life’s about to change because we’re going to cast you as Kate Middleton.”
On preparing to be Kate on one of Netflix's biggest shows, Bellamy said: “It was proper ‘Eat, sleep, Kate, repeat’.”
But as for filming alongside The Crown's big names including Imelda Staunton, Jonathan Pryce and Dominic West, Bellamy revealed it was actually far less intimidating than appearing at high-profile events. She told The Telegraph: “It’s quite a calm atmosphere so you don’t feel like everybody is looking at you and thinking, ‘Don’t let us down.’ The biggest change has been going to fashion shows, because they can be pretty crazy. That’s definitely more of a culture-shock, pinch-me spectacle, much more than The Crown ever felt like.”
If the past few weeks are anything to go by, it sounds as if she might just be getting used to it – which is a very good thing, as we reckon there's SO much more of Meg Bellamy to come.
The Crown Season 6: Part 2 lands on Netflix on 14 December.
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