Tampongate: How 'The Crown' Covered Prince Charles and Camilla's Intimate Phone Call
Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty; Dave Benett/Getty
Netflix didn't shy away from covering one of the most explosive tabloid stories of the 1990s.
The latest chapter of The Crown revisits some of the royal family's most painful moments from the early 1990s, including one sensational headline involving then-Prince Charles and then-Camilla Parker Bowles.
In January 1993, tabloids published the transcript of an intimate, six-minute telephone conversation between the lovers, who were in their 40s. According to The Sunday Mirror, the transcript was originally published by the U.K. paper The People with the tell-all headline "Charles and Camilla — the tape."
In real life, it remains unclear exactly how the recording reached the newspaper. The Sunday Mirror reports that the conversation happened in 1989. At that point, both parties were married to other people — Charles to Princess Diana and Camilla to Andrew Parker Bowles. On the small screen, season 5 of The Crown imagines that the cozy call was intercepted by a wandering wiretapper in real time and sold for profit.
RELATED: Prince Charles and Princess Diana's Relationship Timeline
RICK RYCROFT/AFP via Getty
As seen in the transcript shared by the paper, Charles told Camilla that he wanted to "live inside" her trousers and then joked that he could be reincarnated as a Tampax tampon. Camilla giggled and later added that she "desperately, desperately" yearned for him, before the subject shifted to less promiscuous chit-chat.
As Claudia Harrison joked in character as Princess Anne in The Crown, the recording sounded like "two teenagers being gloriously human and entirely in love." Charles and Camilla also took their time to say goodnight — with multiple "love you" exchanges — before hanging up.
Instantly circulated around the U.K. and the world, the scandal was grievously christened "Camillagate" and "Tampongate," referring to the call's most notorious line. The Sunday Mirror reported that Princess Diana thought the conversation was "sick." In The Crown, Elizabeth Debicki is distraught as she processes what she's read.
RELATED: Fact-Checking The Crown — How Much of Season 5 Is True and What Is Complete Fiction?
Before season 5 hit queues, Dominic West (who plays Prince Charles) spoke about recreating the sensitive memory for the show and the sympathy he gained for what the royal went through.
"I remember thinking it was something so sordid and deeply, deeply embarrassing [at the time]," West told Entertainment Weekly of his perception of the headlines when the news broke nearly 30 years ago.
"Looking back on it, and having to play it, what you're conscious of is that the blame was not with these two people, two lovers, who were having a private conversation. What's really [clear now] is how invasive and disgusting was the press's attention to it, that they printed it out verbatim and you could call a number and listen to the actual tape," he continued. "I think it made me extremely sympathetic towards the two of them and what they'd gone through."
Can't get enough of PEOPLE's Royals coverage? Sign up for our free Royals newsletter to get the latest updates on Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle and more!
While Charles and Diana were separated when Tampongate made headlines, their divorce would not be finalized until August 1996.
Season 5 of The Crown is now streaming on Netflix.
