First, we ask him what we should call him: Your Majesty, Your Grace, Your Royal Highness? Because we are a bit lost, aren’t we, to find ourselves on a terrace in Cannes with Prince Charles, the very year in which he has just been crowned king.
” No idea “answers Josh O’Connor, with this laughing and tender pout, and these sorry eyes which made him crown him with an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his interpretation in the series The Crown of the most patient royal heir. “I’m glad he finally got inducted, I think I understood that. But I don’t know him at all. After the filming of the series, people asked me: “Charles said that, what do you think?” No matter how much I replied that I didn’t know and that I didn’t care, they continued. »
At 33, the British actor is now playing in The Chimera, by Italian director Alice Rohrwacher, in official competition at the Cannes Film Festival, the story of a radiesthesist archaeologist and a gang of grave robbers, them for money, him for love. Josh O’Connor is the rising actor. Since he performed in Only the earthby Francis Lee (2017), a Yorkshire peasant falling in love with his Romanian day laborer, his name keeps coming up.
Disarming
The women fight over him (“I worked with more female directors than male directors: Eva Husson, Autumn de Wilde, Ellen Kuras, Harriet “Harry” Wootliff, Lone Scherfig, Joanna Coates…”he shells on his fingers), gays adore him, and Loewe, the Spanish ready-to-wear brand, a subsidiary of LVMH, has made him his male muse.
It was during a shoot in Mexico City that Alice Rohrwacher called him. He had written to her, expressing his admiration for her and his desire to work with her. “Alice – he pronounces it in Italian: “Alichi” – said to me: “I’m preparing a film, but it’s not for you, the character is supposed to be much older.” I was disappointed. Two months later, she calls me back to say, “OK, I’m rewriting the character, I’m making it younger.” » Radiant smile. The guy is disarming, his smile is disarming, the way he pats you on the shoulder from his height of six feet is disarming. We remember the photo where we found him a resemblance to Shane MacGowan, the singer of the Pogues. And, at the same time, we review The Crown. The man is one of those rare chameleon actors capable of making the real Prince Charles look like a copy.
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