"The Royals" may have just premiered last month, but the new TV drama series from E! network has already caught enough attention from viewers and media outlets. Now the actress who plays the "The Royals" so-called "wild child," Alexandra Park, was spotted pulling off a ridiculous stunt behind the scenes - taking hits from a bong, no less.
In a video shared on E! Online, "The Royals" creator Mark Schwahn said of Park: "One of the dirty secrets of casting is that you cast someone that is the role." Schwahn added that the actress once sent him a video with the caption, "Just another day on set at The Royals!"
As anyone who has watched the series already knows by now, the Australian actress plays the disastrous Princess Eleanor, daughter of matriarch Queen Helena Henstridge of the show's fictional British royal family. English actress Elizabeth Hurley portrays Queen Helena, while British actor Vincent Regan plays the character of the fictional King Simon Henstridge.
The show, which is E!'s "first scripted original program," portrays Princess Eleanor as a wild, self-destructive type of girl who wears too much eye makeup and "who hits the headlines for getting plastered in a nightclub while wearing a micro-dress but no knickers," according to the Independent.
In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Park described her royal character as "so complicated." "There's so many masks. She's in that stage of self-discovery and transition..."
This proved to be true, as "The Royals" premiere in March introduced Park's character as "a princess stumbling through a nightclub, taking shots, eventually topping off a table," the publication wrote. In that first episode alone, Princess Eleanor found herself hitting the headlines after her wild partying at the Paris nightclub where she flashed her lack of underwear for the international press.
Clearly, the character was not based on real-life princess Kate Middleton. Park herself admitted she did not use any modern-day royals as inspiration in portraying her rebellious character. "If anything, in terms of being a princess, I sort of decided to go the complete opposite way to what you might be expecting a princess to be," the 25-year-old star said.
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