Mischief and Magic

Josh O'Connor In the torrid tennis romance Challengers, shows he's a leading man of a particular stripe: sensitive, mercurial, and dreamy to the hilt.

- Gaby Wood

Despite having won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his performance as the young Prince Charles in two seasons of The Crown, Josh O’Connor was a little surprised to be asked to comment on the coronation last May. “I’m the least qualified person,” he whispers when we meet for coffee near his home in northwest London a month later.

Aside from observing the way the future king walked and spoke, O’Connor arrived at The Crown’s nuanced portrait by considering Charles to be a fictional character, outlined in the script as a burdened man: resented by his father, trapped in a “grotesque misalliance” with a woman he doesn’t love, endlessly waiting for his life to take on the meaning for which it is destined. Still, the 33-year-old actor tends to be protective of the characters he’s played, and he couldn’t help feeling relief when the real Charles ascended to the throne. “I watched the highlights,” he says, “and I was glad he got to put on his expensive hat.”

O’Connor’s own hat today is a faded red baseball cap, under which his face creases readily into cheerfulness. He is six feet two—taller than you might imagine from some renditions of him onscreen—and his lean, supple frame somehow reinforces the sense of his gentleness. He is known to his friends for leaving funny, wrought, self-deprecating voice notes, and these can be imagined, pretty much, within minutes of meeting him.