When it comes to the British royal family,Tom Jenningshas become somewhat of an expert.
“We could have easily done 20 hours.
Jennings founded production company 1895 Films, which has created multiple award-winning documentaries in recent years.
Why was it important to start “Charles: In His Own Words” with that moment?
There’s several good reasons for that.
We needed a modern throughline to take us along in the story to make it feel current and contemporary.
Talk shows were talking about his reaction to the pen, and we found it fascinating.
It makes him quite relatable.
I’d be upset too.
I don’t blame him for that, and I’m not a royalist.
Being an American, we have no dog in this fight.
But we have an outsider’s point of view.
What was it like listening to her private conversations and interviews that most people hadn’t heard before?
It was the 20th anniversary of [Princess] Diana’s passing coming up.
They literally said, “You’re a clever guy, Tom.
You’ll figure something out.”
I have a bunch of tapes that she made for me for the book.”
His first words were, “Get in line, mate.
You’re the 2000th producer that’s asked me for those tapes.
I’m taking them to my grave.”
I said, “Andrew, wait.
We do this completely differently.
There’s no narrator.
We don’t have any modern interviews.
We would only use news reports from the time and only Diana’s voice from your tapes.
It’d be like she was narrating her own film.”
He said, “No one has ever asked me to do that before.
When can you be in London?”
I was in London the following morning at dawn from Los Angeles.
I went to his publisher’s office.
It was right out of “Harry Potter,” as it should be a book publisher in London.
He sat me down and said, “Well, are you ready?”
and I said, “Yes, I’m ready.”
He had digitized the tapes, but he had not shared them with anyone.
It was by far, professionally, one of the most magical days of my life.
We didn’t talk because she’s so engaging.
It was colloquial, very conversational.
The first thing I said is, “I can’t believe her laugh.”
Because she laughs telling these stories.
While you may have heard her once or twice laughing, not like this.
This was like deep, satisfying, very happy almost giddy sometimes laughs.
I’d never heard those sounds come from anything I had ever known of her.
Why do you think the public has finally warmed to them as a couple?
Did you learn anything in particular while making the film?
I didn’t know that he and Camilla had dated in 1970 when they were both single.
That was taken in 1975.
Say what you want, but he’s remained true to Camilla the whole time since 1970.
After a while, it’s like, “He’s been with her for 53 years.
Maybe it’s time to say ‘Okay.'”
Everything seems chaotic, and he’s more calculating.
I don’t mean that in a derisive way.
He has far horizons on his mind, and I think Camilla was part of that.
He hoped for the best.
He would keep writing it.
I don’t think he treated Diana well at all, but he managed to get through it.
Although I’m very confused by the whole losing the consort and that she’s now queen.
That didn’t seem to go over very well.
It reminded me of the movie “Amadeus” “Too many notes; too many words.”
Let’s call her queen and get on with it.
King Charles’ fractured relationship with Prince Harry
The documentary explores Charles' relationship with his sons.
Do you think there’s a way back for Charles and Harry?
Again, I think he’s playing some kind of long game, at least with Harry.
I think Harry is very, very upset about losing his mom at such a young age.
I think Charles has a much longer game in his mind with his sons than any of us recognize.
You touched on the media scrutiny that he’s faced his entire life and his difficult childhood.
You even included photos of paparazzi following him while he was windsurfing, for instance.
He can’t get away from it.
When he was skiing in Switzerland, he said, “It’s just too much.”
You think, “You’re the Prince of Wales.
What do you care?”
After a while, you’d think, “Don’t we have enough pictures of this guy?”
He can’t have a normal life.
He can’t even hit the beach.
He has no normal life.
It takes a special kind of person with a depth to them to live their life in a fishbowl.
He’s like the Marilyn Monroe of the royal family.
When you think about it, with Diana gone, he’s the target of all those lenses.
And I don’t like someone taking my picture with an iPhone.
Do you think he’ll ever stop writing letters and lobbying the government?
I couldn’t believe the number of letters he writes in a year.
When did he have time to do anything else?
But he went ahead and did it.
He was doing this long game stuff that we’ve been talking about when he was 19.
I couldn’t tie my shoes when I was 19, barely.
I think he’s going to continue to meddle, ashe says at that one point.
He’ll be more deft about it, perhaps.
He talks about streamlining the monarchy, modernizing the monarchy.
I don’t know where is it written that a monarch can’t be involved in politics.
Maybe his long game is, “It’s not written down.
We’ve done it that way for so long.
Again, I think it’ll be gradual and slow.
It’s interesting that he wastalking about climate changedecades ago, and no one listened to him.
People laughed at him, and it turned out he was right.
He got the environmentalist bug and it’s never left him, so good for him on that.
He was way, way ahead of that issue.
How do you choose what subjects you are going to work on next?
Whatever they’re buying, I always joke.
Whatever the networks are buying but we still have to convince them that it’s a good idea … 50 million people watched our documentary, something extraordinary.
That was much harder to do because the queen didn’t say much, God rest her.
We should do Charles.”
Their first question was, “Is there enough material?”
Having done a lot of these archival programs, I laughed and said, “Are you serious?
Even I know off the top of my head how much material there should be in the world.”
Oftentimes, we’ll ask archival sources, “We don’t want the cut-to-air piece.
We want all the raw footage from that day.”
In general, I make a run at pitch stories that I find fascinating, especially.
Our goal is to make the story feel new and fresh, but also play like a movie.
We had motion picture cameras going through 50 or 60 years of time.
It’s a massive jigsaw puzzle.
It’s our own personal matrix when we put these things together.
You could do this format with anything or anyone if the footage exists.
It’s just how you put it together.
The trick is to make it feel seamless.
He does have the timing thing down.
I’ll give him that.
Then my staff will be like, “It’s going to work.
We’ll make it work.
Is there anything else you want people to know about this film?
I’d like people to watch it because they will be really surprised.
For me, Charles was the headline caricature that we all know, in a sense.
There is so much more there than I expected to find.
His long game has not arrived.
It’s just beginning.
Stream the documentary on Hulu from Saturday, April 29, and on Disney+ from Friday, May 5.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
