The Crown’s Tobias Menzies on Playing the Prickly Prince Philip (2025)

In The Crown’s third season, creator Peter Morgan dug into Prince Philip’s tragic backstory—how his own royal family was overthrown and exiled from Greece when he was still an infant; how his mother was committed to a sanatorium, diagnosed with schizophrenia, and subjected to crude psychiatric treatments; and how, when he was a teenager, his sister died in a plane crash with her husband and children. Philip’s complicated origins—deftly telegraphed by Tobias Menzies—revealed why Prince Philip may have found such purpose and stability within the navy, and why it was such a personal blow when he had to forfeit that career to support his wife after she ascended the throne.

In season four of The Crown, which premieres November 15 on Netflix, Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth (Olivia Colman) step back as their four adult children take center focus. Soon, it becomes abundantly clear just how little Philip, a survivor of Shakespearean tragedy, has in common with his male offspring—whose chief complaints seem to be the constrictions of their titles. When Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor) introduces Princess Diana (Emma Corrin) to the family, Philip acts more fatherly to this outsider than he does his own sons.

Even though Philip receives less screen time this season, Menzies—who proved his extraordinary acting range on Outlander, playing both the kind, academic Frank and Frank’s evil 17th-century counterpart Black Jack Randall—packs each scene with emotional frisson, capturing Philip’s many contradictions. The real Philip may not be many people’s favorite royal family member, not that he would care—his off-color jokes and bluster can be off-putting—but Menzies’s captivating portrait of Philip will be missed when Jonathan Pryce succeeds him in the role next season.

In anticipation of his final season on The Crown, Menzies spoke to Vanity Fair last month about Philip’s intriguing contradictions, his world-class bullshit-o-meter, and his fascinating relationship with Princess Diana. The actor also revealed why—as much as he loved playing Philip—he would be intimidated to meet the royal in real life.

Vanity Fair: Were you able to wrap all of your Prince Philip story lines before The Crown shut down due to the pandemic?

Tobias Menzies: I had actually wrapped about two weeks before lockdown. The stuff that they were due to go and shoot was a bunch of stuff on a skiing trip that was in one of the episodes. And usually we would do some reshoots once they had completed principal photography. But given all that, they made the show out of what we had shot. They seemed happy with that.

In season four, there is such a shift—adding Princess Diana and Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson) into the mix. Every character confronts different struggles and themes. What were your conversations with [creator] Peter Morgan like ahead of filming the season?

I don’t remember whether I got a clear lead from him. This season feels like the younger generation starts to take over the family business—or at least their lives become a bit more dominant [to the story]. So I feel for both Philip and the Queen—there’s an element of it becoming more complicated to manage the personal and domestic inside of the public role of the Crown—especially as Charles’s life gets more complicated. All of their children grow up, have their own lives, and varying degrees of complication. I feel like a lot of Philip’s stuff is about, in a way, protecting the brand.

I love the episodes that showcase Philip’s relationship with Diana, which is depicted as being surprisingly sweet and tender—especially during the early days of her courtship with Charles. How much did you research their real-life relationship?

A continual challenge with this stuff is there isn’t a huge amount on public record about what happened behind closed doors. And Philip isn’t very self-revealing in that way. But someone in production managed to get ahold of copies of some letters between him and Diana. I was really struck by the kind of balanced, calm, quite tender kind of atmosphere to those letters. He clearly, behind the scenes, worked quite hard to mend that relationship. And if those letters are anything to go by, he does seem to have been a keen supporter of hers.

With all these things [on The Crown], though, there’s a large chunk of us imagining ourselves into it, and sort of picking up on scraps [that are publicly available]. Certainly what Peter’s gone for in the new season is a continuing on Philip’s irritation and frustration with Charles. So we see him really taking quite a shine to Diana, and putting quite a bit of pressure on his son to make it work.

In season three, we saw Philip have this delightful relationship with his daughter, Anne. In the new season, we see him connect to Diana. It seems like Philip has an easier time connecting with the women of this new generation. Do you have any thoughts on why that might be?

It’s interesting. I think fundamentally he’s quite a man’s man, really. But certainly amongst his children, there seems to be a lot of evidence that Anne was the child that he gets along with best…perhaps because Anne is a bit like him. She’s quite tough, at times quite unemotional and no-nonsense. He seems to find that a lot easier than Charles, who is much more sensitive. And I don’t think Philip really responds to that very well.

And in terms of Diana, on a very basic level, I wonder whether there was just a certain degree of him being very charmed by Diana—this unbelievably charismatic, beautiful young woman. In quite an old-school way, maybe Philip responded to that. You could argue that it blinded him to the more complicated parts of her personality, which ultimately would lead to sort of great suffering and destruction for their family.

Diana was such a massive figure in real life. I imagine you had your own thoughts of her. How was it finding yourself in scenes with Diana reincarnated?

The thing that really struck me, filming it, was just how young Diana was when she got engaged to Charles and became involved with that family. It’s hard not to feel a sort of grim Greek inevitability about the tragedy of it. But she was such a child and heading into such a complicated family. That really brought home the element of what a tragic story it was—because we all know where it ends up. I don’t think there’ll be a single viewer who won’t know how that story ends. I think that’s going to have a big impact on how people watch it.

Given Philip’s tragic backstory—he endured so much more trauma than the other royal family members—and how complicated he is as a person, he seems like either a psychiatrist’s dream or an actor’s dream. When you started researching him, what fascinated you?

As you say, I think he is a pretty complex person. Even though he doesn’t give a lot away in interviews, just atmospherically, you get quite a lot from him. Emotionally, he seems hot to me. There’s always an element of frustration and irritability, and suppressed emotion, it seemed to me. I’m sure all of these, he would pooh-pooh and deny.

But seeing this sort of alpha male, clearly someone who likes to be busy and to influence things, be in this strange, largely ceremonial role where he is second to his wife—and really does not have a huge amount to actually do every day. You can see in him that he chafes at it, doesn’t necessarily find it comfortable. He’s clearly made a life for himself, takes the role seriously, and has done a lot of really interesting work. But I felt like that was where to start—with someone who has quite a lot of emotion in him but has spent a lot of time not showing it and suppressing it. That basic tension was the touchstone for me going into it.

On the flip side, he’s funny. A lot of that comes out in both irritability, but also quips and jokes—some of them not great, famously kind of off-color. But I feel like they’re all expressions of a desire to slightly poke at the structure of things, punch holes in it, just sort of rattle it up a bit. That also feels like an important ingredient in his relationship with Elizabeth…it’s maybe been quite helpful for her over the years to have someone who is able to make her laugh, and kind of take it slightly less seriously, alongside her.

Do you have any favorite Prince Philip anecdotes that encapsulate those complexities?

I’ve come to quite enjoy his sort of resistance to bullshit—his bullshit-o-meter. It must be a very strange life because, every room he walks into, there are people who are very nervous and slightly tongue-tied, who probably don’t say much to him. He’s constantly having to make the running, so I find it highly understandable why, in trying to do that, he has, from time to time, overstepped the mark.

How did you and Olivia approach re-creating that complicated relationship dynamic, and the texture of their shared history?

The way Olivia and I ended up working was a bit more instinctive than kind of long conversations. I think we were both clear that humor was a significant ingredient in how they interact.

Having played him, do you have any interest in meeting Philip or corresponding with him?

I think it would only be interesting if he had maybe watched some stuff, to have that conversation about what it’s really like—and did we get anywhere close at times [on The Crown]? It would be more interesting to get some answers…but, having seen his interviews, he’s so flinty when anyone tries to ask him personal stuff or get into emotional feelings about his life or his childhood. He’s so defensive about that stuff that I’m not sure you’d get very far. There’s also a certain fear factor. I think he would be pretty intimidating.

How has your view on the royal family changed since playing Philip?

I’m fundamentally republican, probably small-R republican in that it doesn’t feel massively grown-up for a country to have an inherited monarchy as our head of state. But I’ve gained respect for them, for their sense of duty. They do work hard, and they have taken their role seriously. I think it’s not easy to fulfill that role—effectively you have no real agency, but you do have to be the kind of shop window for a lot of stuff. It’s a curious role, one I wouldn’t like to try and do.

What did you think when you heard that Jonathan Pryce would succeed you as Philip?

I was excited. I think he’ll do a great job…it’s such an unusual thing, kind of taking on the baton from Matt [Smith], and now sort of handing it on to Jonathan. I wish him all the very best and hope he enjoys it as much as I did.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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