Atlanta actor plays Charles in movie

If you thought it was noteworthy that Meghan Markle, a divorced, biracial American actress, is marrying Queen Elizabeth II’s grandson, Prince Harry, on Saturday, then hold on to your top hat:

Prince Charles, Harry’s dad and the future King of England, lives in Atlanta. Morningside to be precise. “When my agent called me, he was just as surprised as I was,” Steve Coulter said with a chuckle.

Coulter, 58, portrays Charles in “Harry & Meghan: A Royal Love Story,” a new and surprisingly uncornballish TV movie that debuted on Lifetime on Sunday night. If you missed it, don’t worry: Lifetime will replay it several times this week pretty much ensuring no one misses this first-date-to-proposal retelling of a royal love story that’s more rocky reality than fairy tale at times.

“It’s really kind of fun, but it’s also sweet and not tabloidy,” said Coulter, who started out not knowing much about the real-life royals, but ended up empathizing with them. “It has stuff about the media and the pressure of public life and the struggle to always represent (England) with honor.”

Indeed, Charles is often depicted as being stiff and woefully out of touch with the real world, but this movie shows him as an engaged father who’s also aware that his family belongs to and helps set the tone for the entire British commonwealth. The opening scenes are a flashback to the days after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, when Charles takes Harry and his older brother, William, to Africa.

“I’ve never acted with a lion before,” Coulter said of the scenes set in Botswana, which was actually a ranch about an hour north of Los Angeles. “I’ve acted with Al Pacino, but I think I was actually more excited about acting with the lion!”