Michael Sheen would "absolutely not" want to be a member of the royal family.
Michael Sheen stars as Prince Andrew in A Very Royal Scandal
The 55-year-old actor stars as Prince Andrew in the upcoming miniseries 'A Very Royal Scandal' but when asked if would have liked to have been a member of the royal family in real life, admitted that he would never wish to actually be blue-blooded.
He told People: "Absolutely not. No. The fairytale image of it seems so extraordinary — living in palaces and having everything you want and servants and all that kind of stuff. But the reality seems to be that there are far more restrictions than there are freedoms. No amount of wealth or assets or privilege can make up for not being able to have basic sort of freedoms that a lot of us take for granted. So no, I would not want to have that life."
The 'Masters of Sex' star also noted that he had been " quite naive" with his assumptions about the media and their relationship with the monarchy but then realised while shooting his latest role that it is more of a give-and-take arrangement.
He said: "I’d always quite naively imagined that the media and the royal family were quite separate institutions. But then it became clear that there’s all these sort of negotiations that go on between them, and there’s a kind of, you know, ‘Well, if you do this, then we’ll do that. And if you give us this interview, we’ll hide this thing.’ You know, it’s a real — there are deals being done all the time between the two institutions, which I found fascinating, and I didn’t realize that. That was a big surprise.”
Tagged in Michael Sheen Prince Andrew