The good, bad and the ultimate . . . who made best job of being Philip?
When His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh passed away, Her Majesty The Queen lost the husband whom, in her own words, had “been my strength and stay all these years”.
Over the decades, a number of actors have attempted to show us what the longest-serving royal consort in British history was really like. In tribute to Prince Philip, Steve Cain takes a look at a selection of them.
On a cold, damp afternoon in July 1939, at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, the 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth spotted the handsome – and penniless – 18-year-old Prince Philip for the first time.
Some eight years later Buckingham Palace announced their engagement and, on November 20 1947, war-weary Britain was reinvigorated by a royal wedding.
During the ceremony, the young bride vowed “to obey” her husband and, throughout their 73-year marriage, Elizabeth deferred to Philip’s judgement in all private and personal family matters. However, during her coronation in June 1953, Prince Philip knelt before his Queen and promised to be her “liege man of life and limb”.
In public, Philip walked two paces behind his Queen but in private he remained by her side. Their partnership was blessed with many happy occasions and events – four children, eight grandchildren, 10 great grandchildren, a silver, golden and diamond jubilee, and a platinum wedding anniversary – and tested by crises.
To many, Prince Philip was an enigmatic character – a strong-willed, independent man with a no-nonsense approach and, at times, an abrupt manner.
He was also a progressive prince who challenged a conventional court and, in doing so, created the role of the contemporary consort and modernised the Monarchy. Political correctness was not something he paid lipservice to and his frequent “gaffes” – which he referred to as “ice-breakers” – were infamous.
So, any attempt to portray such an extraordinary man is no mean feat. Yet many actors have risen to the challenge and taken on the role – some more successfully than others.
Indeed, Matt Smith was widely praised for bringing out the young Philip’s “acerbic wit and his playful side, as well as his occasional petulance” in the first two seasons of Netflix’s lavish drama, The Crown. Much was made of Smith’s onscreen chemistry with Claire Foy’s Elizabeth and the critics noted that “one can well believe that this is a young couple coming to terms with the various difficult aspects of their relationship”.
Smith’s successor to the role, Tobias Menzies, who played the Duke in seasons three and four, was said to have given “a quieter, but just as affecting” performance, although he was commended for his “characterisation of Philip’s complexities.”
Jonathan Pryce will play Philip in seasons five and six of The Crown, opposite Imelda Staunton as the Queen, and with the focus firmly placed on the 1990s – a particularly eventful decade for the Royal Family – the esteemed actor certainly has plenty to sink his teeth into.
Often in television dramas and feature films, the role of Prince Philip tends to be written as a supporting character to the Queen. When Dame Helen Mirren starred as the Monarch in The Queen, a lesser actor may have been eclipsed by her outstanding performance.
However, James Cromwell played the Duke and was praised for showing Philip “as an important support for Her Majesty in one of the most difficult times of her reign”. The multi awardwinning
film garnered, among others, two BAFTA’s, two Golden Globes and an Academy Award.
Three different actors – Nicholas Le Provost, Clive Francis and Kenneth Colley – took on the role of Philip in Channel Four’s 2009 fivepart docudrama – also titled The Queen – that examined pivotal events of Elizabeth’s reign, including Princess Margaret’s ill-fated romance with Group Captain Peter Townsend, the attempted kidnap of Princess Anne and the conflict between love and duty experienced by Prince Charles as a consequence of his relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles. Penny Russell-Smith, the Queen’s communications and press secretary between 1993 and 2007, acted as a consultant on this series, which was described as “groundbreaking”.
Hollywood legend Stewart Granger starred as Prince
Philip in The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana, a CBS TV-Movie shown a year after the 1981 fairy tale wedding. It was criticised for portraying a sugar-coated, chocolate box image of their relationship. In the same year,
Hammer-horror legend Christopher Lee played the Duke in Charles and Diana: A Royal Love Story. Despite being described as “blink-andyou’ll-miss-it” performance, critics felt “Lee brought refined glamour to the role”.
The critics were not so kind about Diana: Her True Story, the made-for-television mini-series based on Andrew Morton’s sensational biography, in which Donald Douglas portrayed Philip. Described as merely a “cashin”, it was felt that “the less said about the supporting cast, especially those playing the royals, the better”.
Similarly, the Hallmark Channel’s William and Catherine:
A Royal Romance which featured Mark Penfold as the Duke of Edinburgh, was mauled by the critics for its “stilted” performances and also for depicting the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s courtship as little more than “a Royal romcom”.
Peter Egan played Prince Philip in 2005’s Charles and Camilla: Whatever Love Means. Reviewers deemed the dramatisation, which chronicled the enduring relationship between the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker-Bowles, to be “extremely contrived”.
In the same year, character actor David Threlfall portrayed the Duke in the “engaging if somewhat tawdry” The Queen’s Sister, an account of the life of Princess Margaret from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s.
Despite the dramatisation being labelled as “a lightweight
confection”, Threlfall won a Royal Television Society award for Best Actor.
The passing of Prince Philip may prompt a slew of new dramatisations seeking to shed light on what goes on behind palace walls. Inevitably, some will fare better with the critics than others.
For seven decades the partnership between HM Queen Elizabeth II and her consort HRH Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh endured and flourished, ensuring that the British Monarchy was strong enough to survive the crises it has had to face.
The love and support given by Prince Philip to the Queen was, undoubtedly, a significant contributing factor to the second Elizabethan age being as golden.
As the Queen herself said, in a speech given in 1997, “we owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim, or we shall ever know.”