When the biggest news of your life comes your way — like being cast as two of the world’s most recognizable people in one of Netflix’s biggest shows of all time — you probably hope that the setting will match the enormity of the moment.

“I was at home doing some stretches,” Ed McVey tells Tudum with a laugh from one of the nondescript gray hallways of a film studio in North London that, at any given doorway, turns into an immaculate opulent palace. He’s talking about finding out he’d been cast as university-era Prince William in the sixth, and final, season of The Crown alongside his co-star Meg Bellamy, who stars as Kate Middleton. 

For Bellamy, the backdrop was even more glamorous. “I found out when I was at work, and then still had to carry on working throughout the day,” Bellamy says, also chuckling. “I used to work at Legoland Windsor [Resort],” she adds pointedly, the vague proximity to her soon-to-be royal cosplay hanging like some poetic twist of fate. 

Since its launch in 2016, The Crown has spanned 50 years of the history of the British royal family, swapping out its cast in two-season intervals to show the progression of time. This final outing of the series chronicles the most difficult period for the monarchy, as the episodes move through the death of Princess Diana in 1997 and its aftermath into the 2000s and beyond. McVey and Bellamy join the season in its latter half and (in keeping with the show’s tradition of peppering its prestige bookings with almost entirely green talent) are making their official screen debuts. Before being cast, McVey had just graduated from drama college and Bellamy was fresh out of school. They both joined open auditions which saw them screen test multiple times with each other, the rest of the cast, and, in McVey’s case, with Luther Ford, who would go on to be cast as his brother, Prince Harry.

“We really were hoping it was each other before we got cast,” says Bellamy about the instant chemistry with her soon-to-be screen partner. “We’d messaged every day up until the read-through, like, ‘I hope it’s you.’” By the time they were both cast, McVey says the shorthand between them was clear. “It felt so simple, and it felt so breezy,” he says. “It felt like the work came very naturally and the relationship came very naturally. She’s a really lovely person, and so it was very easy to get along with [her] and to bring this relationship to life.”

In Season 6, we meet the pair where William and Kate met in real life, on the campus of the University of St Andrews in Scotland between 2001 and 2005, where they both initially studied art history together. “Going to St Andrews was really amazing in terms of feeling close to her,” says Bellamy about playing Kate, who married into the royal family in 2011. She and Ed visited the coffee shop where Kate and Will supposedly met for coffee. “There’s an eerie sense of presence,” says Bellamy. “You get to see where they ran in the morning, and that day-to-day life was really helpful to inhabit when you are re-creating that.” In terms of the pressure of getting to grips with the young version of Kate, Bellamy says it was vital not to let any knowledge about her later life inform her work. “It was helpful for me to not look at her too much [after their wedding] because I don’t play her in that era,” she says.

Despite neither McVey nor Bellamy thinking when they were cast as William and Kate that they particularly looked like the real-world sweethearts, their first on-set pictures from filming hit the internet like a ceremonial cannon boom. “In full hair, makeup, costume, I looked at myself and I was like, ‘OK, there he is,” says McVey. From that moment on, there was no going back, and for McVey, that instant attention from passersby turned into some useful, if unintentional, research for his character. “St Andrews was quite something, and I think that was a big shift,” he says. “It was the first time feeling like a commodity and something for people to look at and to take pictures of. [It was] incredibly helpful, because that’s what William was going through every day of his life. He never felt normal, and that’s a pivotal problem. So in experiencing that firsthand, I could say, ‘Oh, that's what it feels like.’ ”

While McVey and Bellamy join the series together, McVey has the unique experience of absorbing not only past performances of Prince William from the show (including Season 6’s first iteration, played by Rufus Kampa), but the real prince’s life that’s always been under watchful scrutiny. “He and Harry are the first young royals that have had their whole lives documented from literally the day they were born until the present day,” he says. Despite this, McVey says he didn’t have much awareness of the minutiae of the royal family, especially the living memory of Princess Diana’s death, which is played out by Elizabeth Debicki this season. “I only met [Elizabeth] twice through the whole filming,” says McVey of his on-screen mother. “So I had this really useful, ethereal image of her, and I was able to build my own image of her as this perfect person, as this flawed person, as this person that loved me and cared for me, and that I really missed.”

By helicoptering into the final few episodes of The Crown, McVey and Bellamy started their careers as young actors while witnessing firsthand the wrapping up of what has become one of the most ambitious television conceits in recent history. After more than a decade in the works and a little less on our screens, Season 6 closes the palace gates for good. “There was definitely an atmosphere of everybody savoring their final moments, which was so lovely, because everyone was just so appreciative of the time that they had left,” says Bellamy of her own short but sweet time on The Crown. “There was a real beauty, I think, in joining later on, and really feeling like part of this huge thing. You’re just a small piece in this huge puzzle.”

The Crown Season 6, Parts 1 and 2 are streaming now. 

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