The fifth season of The Crown has officially dropped on Netflix, and we’re engrossed in the drama that’s unfolding over the show’s new decade — the ’90s. Ever since the highly acclaimed series debuted in 2016, it’s taken some creative liberties from time to time, despite heavily relying on history to guide its plot. As we tune into the drama “inspired by” historical events, GRAZIA USA is unpacking every time we asked ourselves, “Did that really happen?”
We’re focusing on The Crown’s fifth episode “The Way Ahead.” Prince Charles is faced with the consequences of a phone call with his secret lover Camilla Parker Bowles that was obtained and released to the public. (While he was still married to Princess Diana, mind you.)
The episode opens with a snippet of the phone call in question. Prince Charles and Camilla discussed the layout of one of Charles’ upcoming speeches while whispering sweet nothings to one another. When the phone call is accidentally usurped, the recording is brought to the press, who hold it as it would be damaging to his marriage to Diana.)
After the couple announce their separation, the papers feel ready to publish the private conversation where Charles told Camilla he wanted to be so close to her, he wished to live in her “trousers.” When she replied he would be reincarnated as “a pair of knickers,” Charles facetiously retorted that with his “luck,” he’d come back as a tampon.
As Charles tries to regain respect as future King, he continues to partake in speaking engagements such as The Prince’s Trust, and agreed to a tell-all interview, in which he admitted to his affair with Camilla.
Thereafter, Princess Diana seemingly sartorially replied to the scandal with her iconic “revenge dress.” She wore her memorable off-the-shoulder LBD from Greek designer Christina Stambolian to attend a fundraiser for the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens in 1994 — the very same evening her estranged husband publicly admitted to having an affair with current Camilla.
So what really happened? The now-King of England, Charles III and Queen Consort Camilla did have their private phone conversation leaked in early 1993. The public dubbed the scandal “Tampongate” and “Camillagate.” The intimate and explicit conversation reportedly took place in December 1989, while Charles was still married to Princess Diana and Camilla was still married to Andrew Parker Bowles, only amplifying the public’s distaste for the situation. Not only did the transcripts contain graphic sexual content, but they also revealed that Charles and Camilla had pursued an extramarital affair for years.
A transcript of the call was first published by an Australian magazine in January 1993. British tabloids quickly jumped on the bandwagon and began publishing as well. According to the Los Angeles Times, the phone conversation was reportedly, “recorded by an amateur radio buff who picked it up on high-tech scanning equipment in December 1989.”
Charles, however, was not the only royal to have his privacy invaded during that period. In August 1992, The Sun published a front-page article detailing the existence of a private phone call between Diana and her close friend James Gilbey, heir to the namesake gin fortune. The public took to naming the scandal “Dianagate,” and most famously, “Squidgygate.”
While Princess Diana and Prince Charles were already separated at the time of the leak’s publication, they would go on to divorce in August 1996. Camilla and Andrew announced their separation in January 1995. Prince Charles and Camilla married in 2005.
