Prince Charming
His role in Doctor Who made him acting royalty. Now Matt Smith is playing the real thing, giving Prince Philip a new dimension in The Crown, writes Polly Vernon.
The day before I interview Matt Smith, publicity for his Netflix show The Crown falls over the UK like fresh snow. There are posters; there are interactive online ads that explode on the peripheries of any website you visit; there are billboards. The side of every second London bus is plastered with 1.8m images of Smith’s face, alongside that of Claire Foy, his co-star in The Crown.
“I keep seeing your face on buses,” I tell him, by way of a hello.
“I just saw one! First time,” he says. He’s settling into an armchair just across from me in a restaurant in central London. He is taller than you’d think, a good 1.8m. Broader, too, than he seemed in Doctor Who — he’s out-and-out beefy these days. Worked-out; personally trained. He’s grinny, pleased to see me, in his navy knit. A long gold necklace, a 34th birthday gift from his girlfriend, the actress Lily James, hangs round his neck like a talisman; his hair springs and flops, part schoolboy unruly, part rock-star flounce. What’s it like? Seeing your face like that? “Well, I don’t know.” Smith’s speaking voice is thespy-posh with authentic comprehensive schoolboy undertones. He has an old-fashioned turn of phrase. He says things like “old bean”; he’ll describe another man’s fart as “cataclysmic”.
“I guess it’s like, ‘Oh! There it is!’ And then it leaves.”
Do you ever get used to seeing yourself like that? Do you even relate it to you?
“Yeah! Your conscious mind attaches … I’m not sure, actually. It’s probably a metaphor for the sporadicness and momentariness and transientness of being an actor. They [parts, jobs, plays, films, acclaim] are there, and then they’re gone, and then they’re there, and if you’re lucky, they come and go maybe, three, four times.” Isn’t that an incredibly unstable way to be? “Yes, but being an actor is an incredibly unstable way to be. You know actors. Do any of them seem stable?”
The waiter approaches. We decide we’ll wait to order lunch. Do you want a drink-drink, I ask Smith. “Do you?” he asks back. We order a drink-drink.
SMITH AND I have met before. We were introduced in 2009, just as Smith had finished filming his first series of Doctor Who, but before it screened — when it did, he became suddenly, dramatically, overnight famous.
I liked him immediately. He was 27 and sweet, very excited by life, not remotely too-coolfor-school. Fun, smart, amusingly reverent. Well brought-up. He told his friend off for swearing in front of me that first night; he wouldn’t let me go to the bar to get the drinks.
The drink-drinks arrive: dry white for me, beer for Smith. “So how do we do this? Do we just start?” I guess so. I click through the passcode on my iPad to access my Dictaphone app, make sure it’s working. Smith watches me. “Ha ha ha! I know your code!” he cackles. It is unlikely that you haven’t already heard (or read, or viewed) someone, somewhere, raving about The Crown, his Netflix show — about the class of its writing, about the quality of its casting, about the lushness of its aesthetic, about how elegantly it walks the line between creepy veneration and lampooning of its real-life subject matter — but in case you haven’t: it is, it has, it does. The first series, directed by Stephen Daldry and written by Peter Morgan, dramatises the early years of Elizabeth II’s reign. It focuses heavily on her marriage to — and passionate love affair with — naval officer Philip (played by Smith). It is rumoured to have cost £100 million ($176 million) to make.
How much did they pay you? I ask Smith. “Ha! Not as much as you’d think,” he says. I don’t know how much I think, though, I say. He changes the subject.) Point is: pretty much everyone loves it. Smith says he doesn’t read reviews. “Because when I was doing That Face [the 2007 Royal Court play that first raised his profile], I came home on the train after the press night, and I read a review in the Evening Standard, and it was really mean about me, and I thought I’d done good work in that play. I was at Euston Station, and I used to stop at the little newsagents, then go up and get back on my train to Harrow, where I lived, and read a f***ing acting book, that’s how dedicated I was! I read this review and it spun me. I was hurt by it. I was unaware that you could be hurt in that way, by someone writing something.”
No chance of that this time, I tell him. The
Crown’s reviews are raves. “People tell me this.” That must feel good. “It doesn’t feel bad. It feels like the bus. It’s there, then it’s gone.”
Prince Philip represents Smith’s first significant foray on to TV screens since his Eleventh Doctor in Doctor Who made him famous. This makes it a big deal for him, in particular. Critics have lauded his Philip, as they’ve lauded everything else about the show. Many have expressed surprise at how utterly divorced it is from his portrayal of the Doctor; also, how divorced it is from our cruellest, most pantomime-y notions of the real Prince Philip. How humane, how kind, how swaggering, yet vulnerable.
I am not surprised. I’ve always thought he was a bloody good actor. I loved him as geeky parliamentary researcher Danny Foster in BBC Two’s criminally unrecommissioned 2007 political drama, Party Animals. I’d thought there was something mesmerising about his young-old, unconventionally handsome face. I thought that, alone, made him a damn good bet for the Doctor role, never mind the joyous giddiness he would bring to the part. I really loved him as Patrick Bateman in the Almeida Theatre’s American
Psycho, the role he took on in 2014, directly after leaving Doctor Who. (He had to do his opening song while being raised on to stage on a hydraulic platform, dressed only in underpants. “God, I was nervous for that,” he tells me.)
So no: I am not surprised by his Prince Philip; by how it makes you fall a little in love with the character’s real-life counterpart, despite yourself.
“I love him now, too,” says Smith. “Didn’t expect to.”
AS WELL as it all seems to be going for him — with the fame and the acclaim and the constant offers of varied and challenging roles — Smith is not living his childhood dream. He never meant to be an actor. He meant to be a footballer.
He grew up in Northampton, youngest son of David (whom Smith calls “DS”) and Lynne, younger brother to Laura Jayne, a dancer and choreographer. He went to his local secondary school, which was a good one, a former grammar. What was he like as a kid? “I was a strange child,” he tells me. In what way? “In many ways. I had a bad speech impediment. I’d go like, ... sssssssssss … ” He stutters. “You can still hear it sometimes.”
He was bright, though not academically exceptional. The only thing he was ever topstreamed for was history. “But I got suspended for hitting someone in my class. One of the really clever ones, who played the trumpet. We were debating a point, and he was being snide, very
Critics have lauded his Philip ... how divorced it is from our cruellest, most pantomime-y notions of the real Prince Philip.
dismissive. I hate bullying. Really anti-bullying. So I jumped over the table and I had a pop at him. I told him I was going to shove his trumpet up his arse. I went home and told my dad, and he laughed. But then I got suspended. Three days. I tried to play it off to my dad like it was nothing, went, “I don’t care.” He got really cross with me and said, ‘Yes, you do care.’ ”
The thing Smith did care about — very much — was football.
“I was good at it. Which meant I had a way of expressing myself, and people went, ‘Oh!’ So it didn’t matter that I was very clumsy and I had, as I say, quite a bad speech impediment, because as soon as I played football … I was the best at something.”
He really was good. Good enough to be signed at Youth level to Northampton Town, then Nottingham Forest, then Leicester. Smith seemed destined to be a Premier League centre back. Everyone said so. But at 16, he sustained a back injury. Leicester City retained him through a year of treatment. His father drove him to it every day. Eventually, it became clear he could no longer be the player he — or Leicester City — had hoped he’d become. He was released from his contract.
“It was horrendous. Horrendous. I sat on this old piece of furniture and I cried, and my dad said, ‘It’s not the disappointment. It’s how you react.’ He’s amazing, my dad. And my mum. I’m lucky. But I was upset. It was one of the worst days of my life. That was my identity. I was Matt the Footballer. That was how everyone knew me.” At 16, Matt Smith had to remake himself. He’d taken GCSE drama: “Just something to do. I mean, I used to go. But …” You didn’t think, “Wow! I’m good at this!” “I had no consciousness of it at all.” His drama teacher, Mr Hardingham, did recognise Smith’s talent. He entered him into an acting competition; Smith didn’t bother turning up. “Said I would. Didn’t.” So Mr Hardingham cast Smith in Twelve Angry Men. “He didn’t tell me. He rang my mum, told her instead. And then I did it, and … Here I am!”
Was that when you realised you might be good at acting?
“Hmmm. I felt like it came naturally. I didn’t question it. I enjoyed it. I think if those two things sort of marry up, you’re good at something.”
Mr Hardingham got Smith application forms for the National Theatre, which he didn’t fill in. Mr Hardingham persisted; Smith won a place. He went on to study creative writing and drama at the University of East Anglia. (Does he still write? “Trying to, Polly. Trying to.”) Then he started acting professionally, at first in theatre, then in TV, back to theatre, then film, now back to TV … Did Smith want to be famous? “It wasn’t ever about fame. Or notoriety. It was about … Eric Cantona, he scored against Wimbledon or someone — I’m no Man United fan, by the way — but he scored, and he had such grace and confidence. And he scored this goal and he turns around, he puts his collar up, just looks at the whole of Old Trafford and, you know …”
Smith gets up off his chair, puffs out his chest, raises his chin, throws back his shoulders, faces imaginary terraces filled with cheering fans.
“That’s the only way I can describe it. When Eric Cantona put his collar up.”
You didn’t want to be famous — you just wanted to feel that feeling? “Exactly.” What I hadn’t realised about Smith before is how violently he beats himself up. He talks about failing, about ringing his dad, DS, three months into filming Doctor Who and saying, “‘I can’t do it, I can’t do it!’ And my dad said, ‘YOU CAN!’”
And you did, I say, reminding Smith of how resistant Doctor Who fans and TV critics had been towards him when he was cast, how sneering about his youth, how sure he couldn’t possibly replace the beloved David Tennant, who’d had the role before him … and how completely he won everyone over, from his first entrance in the first episode. “But it’s a bus!” he says. “It’s gone!” And then there are awards. Smith’s won a few — fewer then he probably deserves, although presumably The Crown will correct that. Has he fantasised about an Oscar? Of course he has, he says, adding that he doesn’t believe actors who say they haven’t.
But then he tells me he never goes to awards ceremonies any more. “I was nominated for an Evening Standard Award [in 2007, for his performance in That Face], and I really wanted to win it. I was doing a play at the time, called
Swimming with Sharks, with Christian Slater, and I went to the awards ceremony and I didn’t win, and I went on stage that night and I felt so desperate. I felt awful. And afterwards, I went to meet Polly [Stenham, writer of That Face], and she had won for the play. It was the same night, and she won Best New Play, and so you’re celebrating with your friends in this hotel room and, you know, it’s like that thing where you’re … I was happy for her, proud of her and proud of the play, but I can’t deny the disappointment that was in myself. I promised myself from that night, I would never invest in awards ceremonies in that way. So then Doctor Who’s Bafta nomination [2011]. Piers [Wenger, then head of BBC Wales, now head of BBC Drama] rang me, and said, ‘Oh, you’ve been nominated for a Bafta …’ and I said, ‘I’m not going,’ and he said, ‘You are …’ And I said, ‘I’m not, and that’s that … ’”
SMITH CELEBRATED his 34th birthday a week before we meet. I ask him if he thinks he’s a grown-up yet. “No. No. I’m not.” He says he doesn’t really mind ageing — “It’s fine. I mean, I’ve led a hectic lifestyle, but age is your own relationship to age, isn’t it?” — although he also tells me he found the experience of his 20s easier than he’s finding his 30s. “I feel like there was more clarity then.” Was it not just that it was a simpler trajectory? First you had to establish yourself as an actor, which you did; and then you needed to move onwards and upwards, and you did all that too, and now, it’s a little less easily plotted? “That’s true.” Because you’re doing all right, aren’t you? “I’m plodding along. Peaks and troughs.” You sound like you’re having a mid-youth crisis. “Or a midlife one. Get it out of the way.” Do you think you’re good-looking? “No.” Really? “No. I think I’m strange-looking.”
But you know people fancy you. “I know there’s some people that fancy me.” Do you think you’re sexy? “I don’t know. I think as you get older, your relationship with yourself becomes more toxic, and … Oh. I know I can ride off a thing. I can do something. I can engage with women, do you know what I mean?”
He doesn’t want to talk about his two-year relationship with Lily James, the 27-year-old actress who starred in Downton Abbey, Cinderella and (with Smith) Pride and Prejudice and
Zombies, but I ask him anyway. So, you’re in love. “Yeah. I am.” I say that, from knowing Smith a bit, I think he can be quite alpha male, quite traditionalist in relationships, and that there are things in the dynamic between Philip and Elizabeth in The Crown, where he has to walk behind her because she’s his queen, and that’s distressing for him.
“Can I say I think all of that might resonate particularly with you?”
“I believe in certain things. Whether they’re right or wrong. I believe in … opening doors. Or, not opening doors even, but …” Being chivalrous? “Yeah, but I’m all the shit things that are opposite to chivalrous. I’m also a f***ing c*** when I want to be. You’ll have to asterisk that. And that’s like Philip, is my point. He is chivalrous and virtuous and he’s loyal, and I like to think, in my friendships and my relationship, I value loyalty, but … I can be difficult and I can be acerbic and I can be cruel. Not to my friends but, I think, in love, it’s much more complicated. I think chivalry and cruelty often are opposite one another.”
We wind up the interview with some chat about future projects. Next, Smith will star in a post-apocalyptic fantasy horror film called Patient Zero; after that, he plans to write his own thing. “Trying to get some things off the ground. Slowly. Not diligently enough. Can’t call myself a writer. Not yet.”
After the interview we’re joined by one of Smith’s childhood friends, Nick Kingsnorth. He orders a drink and a Scotch egg, and starts demanding I put him on the record, sometimes answering questions on Smith’s behalf. (MS: “Nick! Tell Polly how clumsy I was when we were kids.” NK: “Our mate Bondie’s mum only let him drink out of plastic cups when we were at Bondie’s house.”) Their dynamic offers Smith no privileges, no status on account of his official celebrity. Eventually Smith and I say goodbye. “I tried to be as honest as I could,” he says.
“I’m not expecting you to write some glorified article about me. Quite the opposite. I know full well you’re going to tell the truth about what you think I am. Anyway, my friends tell me the truth about me every day. I’m used to it. And I am … open to it.” THE CROWN IS AVAILABLE ON NETFLIX.