The Crown's Tobias Menzies calls Prince Philip an innovator who performed his duties with dignity and patience

The Guardian

Ahead of Prince Philip's funeral on Saturday, Menzies discussed what he learned watching hours of interviews in preparation to play the Duke of Edinburgh for Season 3 and 4 of the Netflix series. “For someone who clearly was not comfortable with (the role), he managed to do it with quite a high degree of dignity and patience," said Menzies. The actor pointed how Philip dragged the monarchy into the modern era, socially and technologically by putting computers in the palace early on. “The idea of this alpha male spending his life walking two or three steps behind his wife … to be in an almost entirely ceremonial position, it’s fascinating,” Menzies says. “It’s the stuff of Greek drama. (It) is to his credit the effect he’s had on that institution, on that family. He took that completely non-role incredibly seriously, applied a huge amount of energy and inventiveness and created a life for himself with great ingenuity and great energy. And I think the institution itself benefited from that … He was partly involved in the transition from an aristocratic family to one that was marked by largely middle-class values. He helped to open it up and, to a certain degree, demystify a lot of the stuff that was going on, and modernise it.”