Matt Smith has spoken for the first time about being threatened at gunpoint while filming royal drama The Crown in South Africa. The actor, who plays Prince Philip in the Netflix show, revealed that the incident took place while he was enjoying an evening out with a friend in a "rough" Cape Town bar. The pair were forced to make a swift exit when a man produced a firearm and threatened them.
Matt, 34, told the Mr Porter website that the man had approached them and asked: "What are you looking at?"... "We were drunk. We said, 'Nothing mate. No worries.' He was like, 'I'll shoot you, bru.' He had a gun!
Matt Smith has revealed he was threatened with a gun while filming The Crown
"Really stupidly we just went to the bar across the street. I don't know why we didn't just leave altogether. He came up to the window, and went [tap, tap, tap], no word of a lie, he had a Crocodile Dundee knife in his hand. A bouncer came up and was like, 'Get out of here!'"
Matt is soon due to return to South Africa for filming of the second series of The Crown. Thankfully, the dramatic incident has done nothing to hamper his enjoyment playing the Queen's husband. "He's quite a liberating character to play because, in the royal family, he gets to speak his mind and no one else does," the Doctor Who star observed. "Everyone else is bound by this sort of strange protocol."
© Photo: Getty ImagesMatt and Claire Foy star as Prince Philip and the Queen in the hit Netflix series
Matt has previously admitted that he "didn't expect to" end up liking the royal, and said he thinks the pair might actually share some personality traits. "He is chivalrous and virtuous and he's loyal, and I like to think, in my friendships and my relationship, I value loyalty. But… I can be difficult and I can be acerbic and I can be cruel."
The first ten-part series of The Crown begins with the wedding of the Queen, then Princess Elizabeth, in 1947 and continues through until the Suez Crisis of 1956. Matt stars alongside Claire Foy as the monarch, and John Lithgow as Winston Churchill, with Jared Harris as King George VI and Victoria Hamilton as the Queen Mother.
