The Crown’s Jason Watkins: ‘Am I a raging monarchist? I suppose I’m a pragmatist’

The actor talks to Ellie Harrison about whether starring in The Crown changed his views on the royal family, why he likes challenging dramas, his new series McDonald & Dodds… and his unusual party trick

‘I play geeky intellectuals and professors and weirdos’ (Rex Features)

Jason Watkins is walking on his hands. We’re in a stuffy conference room to discuss the 53-year-old’s new murder mystery series, McDonald & Dodds – but instead, dressed in a crisp white shirt, he’s tipped himself upside down.

“The trick is to sort of rock forward and then almost fall over and run,” he pants. “I timed it once and got within a second or two of the world record for running across a basketball court.”

It’s not too late to try again.

“No, it is,” he says, rubbing his wrists and returning to his seat. “It used to be a party trick. It’s confusing for people because I’ve got glasses and I play geeky intellectuals and professors and weirdos.”

That does seem to have become his USP. The actor earned a Bafta for his role as the eccentric, misunderstood landlord who was falsely accused of murdering his tenant in The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies. And in The Crown, which was also written by Peter Morgan, he played enigmatic prime minister Harold Wilson to uncanny effect.

Watkins joined the show at the same time as Olivia Colman and Tobias Menzies, who dethroned the original lead actors, Claire Foy and Matt Smith. “It was daunting in that it’s the biggest show on the planet,” he says – though he was glad to be spared the pressure of stepping into another actor’s shoes.

“I was liberated from the stuff the regulars have to deal with,” he continues, “although Olivia made her majesty her version of it, and will not necessarily have drawn inspiration from Claire Foy’s characterisation. And the same with Tobias’s take on Prince Philip – it’s different to Matt’s. You take your influence from the real person. My only ghost, in a way, was John Lithgow’s spellbinding performance as Churchill. But it’s different. Churchill was a paternal figure in the Queen’s life and he guided her in those early stages.”

Watkins was at the centre of series three’s most moving episode, which dramatised the Aberfan tragedy and its aftermath. The decision to portray the 1966 catastrophe, in which 116 children and 28 adults were killed after the collapse of a mining waste tip, was not taken lightly. Writer Peter Morgan has spoken of how raw the trauma was for residents – some of whom appeared as extras – during filming. For the first time in 53 years, they were offered counselling.

“We shot the episode in a neighbouring village,” says Watkins. “The extras were all Welsh and from the valleys. All of them I spoke to had a connection. They remember being children and their dads saying, ‘Right, we’re going.’ And they got in the car and drove down to Aberfan and literally started digging…”

Everybody in the cast and crew, he says, wanted to get it right. “It was such a cataclysmic event that I weirdly feel is not remembered enough. We were quite privileged in that we were able to share their story with the world.”

Olivia Colman said that she’d become a “lefty monarchist” after working on The Crown. What about Watkins? “Am I a raging monarchist?” he sighs. “I suppose I’m a pragmatist and would say that this is a society where we have a royal family and we have to… that’s the way it is. I’m as pragmatic as Wilson about it.”

Prince Andrew is off limits, he says. “I can’t talk about him. It’s just impossible. If that” – he points at my Dictaphone – “wasn’t on… I can’t talk about it, that’s all I can say really.”

He can talk about McDonald & Dodds, though. Split into two two-hour films, the series is about a pair of detectives who forge an unlikely and rumbustious partnership. He was drawn to the show, in which he stars alongside Tala Gouveia, because of the “diverse element”. “A young, black female officer with a middle-aged white guy from the middle of nowhere – well, Bath, beautiful Bath – I thought that was an interesting clash.”

On the case: Jason Watkins and Tala Gouveia in ‘McDonald & Dodds’ (ITV)

Many of Watkins’ projects have questioned established institutions – the royal family in The Crown, the church in The Golden Compass, the press in The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies. Is it important to him that TV does that?

“You’ve got to earn a living as an actor and I’m not one of those people who just does lots of theatre,” he says. “I love doing television and I’m populist in that way. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have an agenda about what I think is quality and what is important in society. One can contribute to the issues of the day in quite a subtle way sometimes. It doesn’t have to be dogmatic.”

He straightens the cuff of his shirt. It must have gone awry mid-handstand. “You’ve got to do the entertaining first,” he says, “and slip in the other stuff later.”

McDonald & Dodds starts on Sunday 1 March at 8pm on ITV