Exclusive Interview: Filmmaker Tom Jennings Brings Us Behind the Scenes of Charles: In His Own Words

Tom Jennings is a visionary storyteller who is best known for award-winning projects including The Real Right Stuff, Apollo: Missions to the Moon, The Lost Tapes: Malcolm X, and MLK: The Assassination Tapes. As a journalist and filmmaker, Jennings always goes beneath the surface to create one-of-a-kind narratives which have earned him worldwide acclaim. His latest film, Charles: In His Own Words, is no different.

A rare view into the real Charles, Charles: In His Own Words traces back to the beginning, revealing the formative events that have influenced the man, former Prince, and the King he was destined to be. From the creators of the acclaimed National Geographic documentary special Diana: In Her Own Words, this unique portrait of a monarch sifts through a treasure trove of rare, unheard, and never-before-seen archival material to tell the definitive story of Charles through his very own words and those who’ve known him best.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Tom about Charles: In His Own Words, the process of obtaining all this unseen footage, and more!

PC: Charles: In His Own Words is premiering on Nat Geo on April 28th. In this documentary, we see how the public and the media scrutinized everything that Charles did and how things could quickly become a headline. How much did that inspire the creation of this documentary and this first-person narrative told through never-before-seen footage and audio recordings?
Tom: Quite a bit, but we didn’t know it right away. What we set out to do in working with the network was to answer the big questions: What kind of king is Charles going to be? How are things going to change? That was our initial mandate. We wanted to go beneath the surface to try to figure that out as best we could through moments and events in his past to make an educated guess.

But halfway through making this, we realized that it was the lens of the press, how the press sees him, and how he uses the press at times. That is the image that we all know. When you read a headline, there’s so much more to what’s going on beneath the surface. The press became the driving force behind all the themes. We explore about five or six different themes throughout the film. But the press, as Charles has said in an interview a long time ago, is hiding behind every tree and in every bush. They have these long lenses. They’re taking photos through windows. Everything that he’s done since the day he was born has been under the scrutiny of the media. That became the theme throughout.

PC: When you created Diana: In Her Own Words, you watched all of her documentaries to ensure that you brought something new and innovative to the conversation. Did you follow a similar process for this documentary? How much of that experience lent itself to this film?
Tom: We learned from our experience with Diana, that’s for sure. Diana was extraordinarily unique because I had convinced the British author Andrew Morton to let us use the audiotapes that Diana had recorded for him to write the famous book that came out in 1992. He had never released those tapes before. They’re extraordinary. I convinced him to do that by saying there’s no narrator or any modern-day interviews talking about what Diana was like. It was only media from the time. It would be like Diana narrating her own film. He said no one had ever asked him to do it that way. It was good for us that no one had. It turned out really well and became extraordinarily popular. What I learned is that book authors invariably tape-record the interviews that they do for their own writing.

Because we used only archival material to tell this story, it was like we shot this film over 60 years, only using material that was available. Much like what happened with Diana’s story and Andrew Morton, book authors almost always record their interviews on audiotapes and then shelve them. They use them as references in writing their books. So we were able to access these tape-recorded interviews that authors had done with people decades ago.

It was important for us to have the interviews from decades ago because they’re commenting on something very close in time, instead of thirty years later looking back. It was funny because the authors would ask, “Why do you want these tapes?” We’d explain how we make these things. Then a light bulb goes off in their head like, “I could make a podcast out of all of these tapes.” [laughs] We were like, “You can! But can we license that one interview?”

Prior to doing Diana, we had never thought of that before. It works well because authors have done a tremendous amount of legwork and tracked down all these people. Oftentimes, especially in this film, you hear from people who were interviewed long ago who are no longer with us. It’s great to have those voices.

PC: With so much content available on Charles, what was that research process like? When did you start realizing the narrative that was unfolding before your eyes?
Tom: There’s probably a million hours of footage of Charles. He’s in his seventies. The cameras have been rolling on him since he was born. He was the world’s most eligible bachelor for many years. The network came up with a great way of explaining to me what we do, which I hadn’t thought of before.

In storytelling, we’re building the scaffolding in that we have an idea. They didn’t want it to be a biography. There are a lot of those, and there’s going to be a lot of those coming out in the next week or two. So we went thematic. We came up with a dozen themes that would apply. In studying these themes, it helped us better understand who he is beneath the surface and then therefore who he may be as king. We started exploring what was available and what we could find with those themes.

National Geographic, like any network, wants to be able to say there’s new material or unseen material—and we have a lot of that. One thing that we found with Charles is that he traveled a lot. He gave interviews in the four corners of the earth. What we found, fortunately for us, is that when we went to these perhaps lesser-known archival sources, we always said, “We don’t want your cut that aired. We want the raw footage from that day.” Sometimes they had it and sometimes they didn’t. But we found the magical phrase to ask was, “What do you have that’s not been digitized?”

I always tell my young researchers who work very hard, “Just because it’s not on the internet doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.” You have to call and see what they’ve got. Sure enough, almost every place that we called had a dusty room that had that material.

For example, with Charles’ trip to Australia, we got ten boxes of stuff that were never digitized. They’re not digitized because these organizations don’t have the time or money to do that. So we offer to pay for the digitization of this material that we know we want. We’ll pick particular days when we know things happened. Organizations love it because they get their material digitized. But we get to use it first.

We always look for an event. I tell my staff, “If I’ve seen it or if I can remember it, throw it out.” We want new material. For example, a photographer lines up all these shots and circles the one that they use for the publication. But there are 29 other photographs from different angles. Those are the photos we want. We don’t want the published picture because everyone has seen that one.

PC: For viewers, especially in the States, we know Charles through the headlines. But this documentary adds so many different colors to this notable figure. What was the most surprising thing you learned about Charles during this process?
Tom: There were probably a dozen things, but I’ll tell you—and maybe it shows my naivety with the royal family—but I did not know that Charles and Camilla dated in 1970, in their early twenties when they were both single. They did what young people do when they’re in love: they wound up having an intimate relationship. Because of that, Camilla was no longer a virgin. The royal family has rules that Charles couldn’t marry her because the Queen of England is supposed to be pure and not touched. It’s a strange rule now, but this was back in the ’70s. Because of that, they had to go their separate ways. Imagine if that rule did not exist or if they had lied. They would likely be married and we’d be telling a completely different story.

I could give you a lot of other examples, but it shows that people will learn a lot about Charles from watching this documentary. I joke that Charles plays three-level chess while the rest of us are playing checkers. He’s playing the long game. Everything that he does, whether it’s personal, political, or professional, he plays a very long game.

PC: There are so many themes that you’re able to tackle. Was there one that hit home for you? What do you hope audiences take away?
Tom: I certainly hope they take away that there’s a lot more to him than the general public gives him credit for. I didn’t set out to make a pro-Charles film or an anti-one. It’s very journalistic. There’s so much more texture to him than I thought. There were several themes that I loved. I loved exploring his relationship with the press and the press’s relationship with him.

We found an interview with him where he talks about the fact that he can’t go anywhere or do anything, sometimes even in his own house! He talks about how wherever he goes, there are hundreds of cameras hiding behind the trees with long lenses. Sometimes they’ll shoot through the window to see what’s going on inside. He’s been under the microscope in a way that I think few people can understand.

One of my favorite stories of when the press started to turn on him was when he was fourteen years old. He was at a hotel in Scotland and people were staring in the window. He was looking for a place to hide. He winds up in the hotel bar and the bartender is like, “What do you want, Prince?” although he wasn’t the Prince of Wales yet. But he did this great interview where he said the first thing that came to mind was cherry brandy. So that’s what he ordered, but he never said he drank it. But the next day, it was all over the headlines. It was like, “Wow.”

I also didn’t know anything about his investment. His passion for environmentalism began when he met young people planting trees in Wales. He was nineteen. All these years later, he’s still talking about climate change and global warming. He plays the long game like nobody I’ve ever studied before.

PC: If Nat Geo came to you about creating another documentary told from the subject’s perspective, whose story would you like to tell?
Tom: That’s a great question. We did this a couple of years ago, but I would love to do a much longer version on Malcolm X. There’s so much footage on him and so many fascinating interviews that he gave. He was misunderstood. He lived and died in a very tumultuous time. I say him because he’s fascinating but also because I know that media exists. I felt like we could have done a lot more with what exists and it would be highly enlightening for people.

Watch Charles: In His Own Words on Nat Geo today.