This was not in the script. “I can't stress how different the route I was taking was going to be,” confides a bashful and “rusty” Luther Ford, the 23-year-old acting novice who found his way on to television's grandest stage. “I was studying film production. I was going to leave college and become an assistant, or a runner, at some little studio in Soho.” If Ford had followed that path with the keenness he had envisaged 18 months ago, we would likely never have heard from him: he'd be behind the camera, toying with the aperture, standing back from the spotlight.
Today, the camera points towards Ford. Like a bolt from the blue, he was snatched from civilian life through an open casting call, and thrust to global prominence in the final series of Peter Morgan's staggeringly successful royal drama, The Crown. “Everything was kind of happening quite instinctually,” says Ford. “I auditioned, then got the part three weeks later, which I now realise is ridiculous.”
And not just any part. Luther Ford – film student,
