King Charles’ relative Sophie Winkleman has admitted taking etiquette lessons ahead of a major TV role, despite her close personal link to the Royal Family.
Winkleman, 44, is the wife of Charles’s second cousin Lord Frederick Windsor and is officially known as Lady Frederik Windsor.
However, the working actress opts to use her maiden name for her career, which has included roles in a variety of films including Wonka.
On Wednesday, Sophie revealed that she has been taking etiquette tips from an advisor to prepare for her latest role as the Duchess of Rochester in the period drama series Belgravia.
Despite marrying into the royal family herself in 2009, Winkleman told the Daily Mail that she still needed “etiquette lessons” to play the fictional Duchess.
“Alastair (the historical advisor) has been my mainstay for this whole series – he’s been magnificent,” Sophie said.
“I’ve asked him questions every single day, from how do you pick up that stem, how do you lay your knife and fork in between eating, everything.
“I find it’s such a joy and luxury to have someone like that on set every day.”
While Sophie relied on an advisor to portray a haughty Duchess, Lady Windsor could have simply asked her famously ostentatious grand mother-in-law Princess Michael of Kent.
The notorious Princess, formerly Marie Christine von Reibnitz, was so infamous for opulent lifestyle that she once prompted Queen Elizabeth II to remark “she’s too grand for us”.
To marry the Catholic Marie Christine, Prince Michael, who was 15th in line for the throne at the time of their wedding in 1978, renounced his succession right in accordance with The Act of Settlement 1701.
He later retrieved his rights of succession thanks to the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 and is now 52nd in line to the British throne.
More than four decades after becoming royal, the Princess remains a controversial figure who has been accused of making multiple offensive and racist statements.
In 2004, she was accused of racially insulting black diners during a dispute at a restaurant in New York and allegedly told the group to “go back to the colonies”.
In December 2017, the Princess was criticised for wearing an offensive blackamoor brooch with a stylised figure of an African man to a Christmas banquet at Buckingham Palace attended by Meghan Markle, later the Duchess of Sussex.