>> rose: welcome to the program. we begin this evening looking at the n.f.l. conference championships this weekend. we talked to peter king. >> the one thing that really hits me, this will be the first time that they've played, first time, where one has a distinct, huge advantage over the other one. even when they first played, when brady was making his first start in the n.f.l., i think the difference between the two guys was not as stark as it is right now. manning is wounded. he's 39 years old. he's riding off into the sunset, trying to get one last, huge hoorah, and what he needs to do is he needs to rely on the other 52 guys on his team. for 15 years, the other 52 guys relied on him to, hey, put up 38

points today so we can win. now, they're saying, hey, listen, to defense, just don't turn it over. just we will play great and you just don't make a mistake, and it's got to be very humbling for a guy who's got every record in the record book, but that is the reality of this situation. >> rose: we continue this evening with mark strong who stars in arthur miller's "a view from the bridge." >> and the purpose of art, all creativity, really, isn't it, to take us out of our everyday lives, to stop us worrying about e-mails, bills, the rat race, just survival. isn't art, oil, painting, music, everything, to take us somewhere else and make us think about stuff? >> rose: we conclude talking another play on broadway, king charles iii about prince charles and what happens when he becomes king. we talk to tim pigott-smith,

margot leicester, oliver chris and lydia wilson. >> he writes a lot of letters lobbying for his position and this caused some stress because as the prime minister said to nee the play, you're not elected, you have no right to do this, you're just living off taxpayers' money, can't do this, but i think he will want to be involved, though if he comes to see the play, he might be careful about how he does that. >> rose: peter king on the n.f.l. conference championships, mark strong of "a view from the bridge," and four actors from >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: >> rose: additional funding provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications

from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: the road to super bowl 50 continues on sunday with two highly anticipated games. the day kicks off with the patriots against the broncos in denver, 17th meeting between quarterbacks tom brady and peyton manning. patriots pursuing fifth super bowl title. carolina is unbeaten at home this season, the first ever meeting between heisman trophy winning quarterbacks in the playoffs between carson palmer and cam newton face off. joining me is peter king of "sports illustrated." he is widely regarded as america's premier n.f.l. writer and observer. i am pleased once again to have him back at this table again, welcome. new england and denver. how do you see it?

first all, even peyton says where we are is not because of me or the offense but the defense. you have bill belichick who probably knows how to game against another team as well as anybody. >> in history. >> rose: yep. you've got tom brady. who's tom brady. >> charlie, i think there is one thing about this game. look, these two guys have been playing since 2001. their first game was 19 days after 9/11. >> rose: yeah. that's how long they have been playing. the first time they played, pat tillman was a starting player in the n.f.l. >> rose: he died in afghanistan. >> yeah. and, so, all -- you look back, and they have been playing for so long that you tend to think it's going to go down forever. the magic johnson and larry bird and everything. but the one thing that hits me,

this will be the first time they played -- first time -- where one has a distinct, huge advantage over the other one. even when they first played, when brady was making his first start in the n.f.l., i think the difference between the two guys was not as stark as it is right now. manning is wounded. he's 39 years old. he's riding off into the sunset, trying to get one last, huge hoorah, and what he needs to do is he needs to rely on the other 52 guys on his team. for 15 years, the other 52 guys relied on him to, hey, put up 38 points today so we can win. now, they're saying, hey, listen, defense, just don't turn it over. just we will play great, and you just don't make a mistake, and it's got to be very humbling for a guy who's got every record in the record book, but that is the reality of this situation, and the way that the denver broncos can win this game is by manning

allowing his running backs, his receivers and his defense to win this game, and for him to just not turn it over. >> rose: he's thrown a lot of interceptions, hasn't he? >> he's thrown a lot this year, but last week, charlie, his receivers had seven drops, so his receivers last week didn't help him. but i think what's going to be so interesting about this game, i think you're going to see the broncos come out and just simply try to possess the ball, like the bill parcels game where he says i'm going to try to play keepaway from you. >> rose: by running the game? unning the ball. there is the play clock, starts at 35. i would bet when you watch this sunday, and they have a little play clock on cbs on the side of

the screen and they start showing 6, 5, 4, 3, manning will let that clock bleed itself throughout the game because he says the longer i let the clock bleed the less chances tom brady has to get to us. >> rose: do you think peyton manning has been denied? his brother has more super bowls than he did. >> in new orleans and knoxville where he went to college and in indianapolis where he's still a beloved figure, i think there is a lot of sentimental value, but i don't sense anybody looking at peyton manning as a kind of a sympathetic or empathetic figure because he's had so much. he's had so much success. >> rose: a lot of success off

the field. >> i mean, he's in every commercial. saturday night live. i don't sense that, nor do i sense a great human -- hey, hope the patriots win another one. nobody's saying that. >> rose: patriots are favored. should they be? >> they should be favored in a big way. >> rose: to win. yeah, i think they're very likely to win. >> rose: look at the second game, panthers and arizona. >> here's the thing about that game -- in a lot of years, having two explosive teams with the most exciting young q.b. in football, cam newton who can throw the ball a country mile and one of the fastest q.b.s, a great runner. >> rose: mvp this year. certainly the m.v.p. of the league. it's so cute, a lot of people don't like it because he's very demonstrative on the field. he has one of the cutest habits

of anybody to come into the n.f.l. when he scores a touchdown, he walks up to a young child in the first row of the stands and he hands them the ball, and he's convinced every player on his team, when you score a touchdown, you've got to go hand them that ball. and, so -- and, i mean, i was sitting there, i went to their game last week and said to the guy sitting next to me, i said, you know, if i scored a touchdown in a playoff game, i would want that ball, i would want to give it to my son some day. would want that ball. but, no, it's almost, like, you know, if you know what's good for you, you're going to give the ball to some kid in the stands. but it's great. all the stories done, at my web site, we did a story on all the kids who have received the balls and what it's meant to them, and it's really a great thing. so that's why i think the panthers are a real interesting and compelling group for america to root for. but on the other hand, here's larry fitzgerald and the arizona

cardinals. >> rose: 30-something? 32, 33 now, maybe, i forget. but, charlie, he's one of these guys who how do you be better at 32 and 33 than you were at 22 or 23? he's a better blocker, a much smarter player, and last weekend, for the first time in his career, carson palmer, the 35-year-old quarterback of the arizona cardinals, threw a pass left-handed for a touchdown, and that was the touchdown pass that won the game in overtime. it's the first time in carson palmer's life that he's ever thrown a left-handed touchdown pass. a little slip to larry fitzgerald. and i think there is a lot of people who say, i really kind of like that carson palmer guy. i love bruce, the coach. and larry fitzgerald plays the game the right way. there is a lot of people to root for in that game. >> rose: do you think arizona can win?

>> arizona can definitely win. i like carolina. i just think carolina, their offense -- i'm a little worried about carson palmer after watching him in the last couple of weeks. he could have had four interceptions against the packers and the packers dropped a couple of them, but i think that's going to be a really fun game, probably a lit moral confident in -- probably a little more confident in carolina right now. >> rose: do defense always win or is it true now offense always wins? >> each one of the four teams in the playoffs i would say has a top-ten defense, but the other thing that every one of these teams has with the exception of denver is that they all have explosive passing games. denver has more of a ball control offense right now. so i would say this, charlie... you're not winning a super bowl right now without an

above-average to great quarterback, but you still have a chance to win in the n.f.l. today. and you watch the denver broncos play, they can play by winning ball control and a quarterback who doesn't turn it over. >> rose: do you give three points to bill belichick just because he's that good of a coach? >> i give him seven. >> rose: would you really? because every week he comes up with a new game plan that you're not quite expecting. he's the most malleable coach in n.f.l. history. >> rose: what does that mean, malleable? >> every week, it's different. it's something new. he looks at every game plan as a piece of modeling clay and he said, just because we threw the ball 47 times last week, i'll be happy to throw it 19 this week because we can run on them. he presents different defenses. he plays different guys. he benches guys from one week to the next. he's a chameleon. >> rose: could belichick stop

brady if he was opposing coach? could he figure out some way to stop him? >> what he would do is he would be the kind of coach who said, we're going to stop everybody else. we're going to stop everybody else and we're going to let gronekowski, he can have two touchdowns and 170 yards, that's okay, there is not going to be a soul on that team other than him that will hurt us. >> rose: is tom brady the best quarterback in the n.f.l. >> i've just come to that in the last week, charlie. i think football history has not been respectful enough to history because i think otto graham a man who won the championship league seven times

and led his team to the championship every year he played, yet no one mentions him. they mention everyone else. look, tom brady in today's day and age, in a 16-team american football conference, to have played 15 years and, in those 15 years, to be in the championship game ten times, you know, and -- >> rose: because of quarterback skills? >> well. >> rose: and the strength of his arm, the precision of his passing, the wisdom of his play calling? >> he's very smart. he is indo inno, indomnable. unless he gets his knee shredded like in 2008, he won't let an injury hold him back. there is something about his spirit that is special and a lot

of people have it but he combines his spirit with a great skill set. >> rose: thank you for coming. thank you, charlie. >> rose: peter king. back in a moment. stay with us. >> rose: mark strong is here. he stars as eddie carbone, the tragic protagonist in arthur miller's "a view from the bridge," set in 1950s brooklyn, the play explores the pursuit to have the american dream, irrational love and portrayal. won an olivier award for best revival. ben brantley of the "new york times" wrote, mr. strong is the most powerful single performance you're likely to see this year. he also has a busy film career, often playing villainous characters. his most haunting roles... >> they attacked us, iran, in '98, by -- by land in 98, by

sea, by air. they murdered 3,000 of our citizens in cold blood. they have slaughtered our forward deploy and what the (bleep) have we done about it? huh! >> congratulations. you're welcomed to his majesty's service. if you speak a word of what i'm about to show you you will be executed for high treason. you will not tell anyone about what it is you really do. >> i have returned from beyond the grave to fulfilling destiny and extend the boundaries of this great empire. listen to the rabble outside. listen. to the fear. i will use that as a weapon to control him and then the world.

>> he's traveling to beirut. dangerous for travel. i want you to take him from this hotel, drug him, put him in front of a car or truck going 50 miles an hour. >> rose: i am pleased to have mark strong at this table for the first time. it's a pleasure, and welcome. >> thank you, very happy to be here. >> rose: tell me how this began for you. >> i got a call, having not done a play for about 12 years. >> rose: it's surprising because you began in theater. >> i trained from the theater and did a lot of theater. all the theaters in london. >> rose: stay with that one second. you hadn't been on stage 12 years because you had so many interesting film roles or pursuing a film career or

something else? >> i think i had done so much theater and it was a kind of genre i was very familiar with and i didn't know about film and contemporaries of mine were making and doing films and it was a world i realized i could have access to and i didn't know how. and then i got a couple of roles that got me started, if you like. once i was in the club, it's very hard not to continue with that. >> rose: one component leads to another. >> quite. >> rose: what happened, you got a call finally and somebody said i have an offer you can't refuse? >> yeah, well, david asked to see me and i went in to talk to him and he sent me "a view from the bridge" which was in the pile of film scripts i was looking at and was head and sowrldz above everything. >> rose: it spoke to you. yes. >> rose: what spoke to you? very hard to say why a character speaks to you. it's instinctive. i kind of knew who this guy was and how i wanted to play him.

i knew from what i read what kind of a guy i thought he is, and then i read about it. i had never seen the play. i read it at the university, but then i looked into it, and i realized he's played one way, but then i read something a little bit different and thought i would really like to have a go at it. >> rose: you've described this as a slow-motion car crash. set up a play so we understand why it's a slow motion car crash. you're a guy who works on the docks in late '40s, early '50s. >> the early '50s. he's a longshoreman. >> rose: right. he is married and has his wife's sister's daughter, who he's been bringing up since she was a baby, her niece, and they live together in a tiny apartment, and it's all been going pretty well. when we meet them, the girl is now 17, kind of on the cusp of womanhood, and we learn two scillian immigrants, cousins of his wife, have been invited to come stay in the house because

they have been brought in by the syndicate to work on the docks illegally. one of the young men and the girl fall in love with each other and all hell breaks loose. >> rose: right, because he thinks somehow -- he thinks that he wants to marry her because he wants to get entry into the united states. >> yeah, well, it's incredibly complicated. that's why miller's writing is so brilliant. there is a number of things going on. edy's reason for not liking him is he's just after his papers. some interpret he's jealous of the guy and interested in the girl inappropriately. >> rose: suggest he's gay and all that. >> yeah, there is so many different levels on which you can play this. the production releases it from history. it releases arthur miller from just being a playwright we all think we know about plays all done in a '50s style. it's a very bare, stark

production american friends of mine say is the clearest version they've ever seen. >> rose: it's staged in an interesting way, too. the stage is bare, a trademark of this director. and, too, the audiences on either side on the stage, and you sit there in just a square. you're all barefoot. >> yes. >> rose: what's that about? that's an interesting question. we had shoes initially. and the director came in, ivo, and said, i just all want you to get rid of your shoes, and we couldn't understand why that was. in retrospect, it's something about the space he created for us to perform in. it's a very pristine space. the floor is white. what goes on in that space is revealed by a huge, monolithic kind of stone edifice disappearing at the beginning so you reveal these people and that same thing comes in at the end, and it means that the arena or petri dish or boxing ring,

whatever he's created on that stage, is where we perform a play, story, ritual, and i think not having shoes means it connects us to the ground, it makes the thing rather special, but it also does something very special, which is it stops the need for the play to be real. we're not trying to persuade everybody what they're seeing is real. you can see the audience on the stage. you can see we haven't got shoes on. it's about the words, the narrative, the characters, not about the need to persuade everybody that what you're seeing is real. >> rose: the other interesting thing is there is a lawyer, alfieri am i saying that right? >> yes. >> rose: who is, in a sensics our guide. he tells us from the beginning and bradley in his review said he's terrific and essential to the play. >> that's the slow-motion car crash you're talking about. we're set on that course by the lawyer who basically appears and says, okay, here's the story. this is what's going to happen.

and then you watch it happen. essentially, that's the kind of ingredient or tragedy that you know that the central character has hue brings, that the gods will be displeased, that it's not going to end well but you watch what happens to make that kind of cataclysmic event take place at the end of the play. >> rose: in which there is life and death. >> yes. >> rose: but you also ponder the question as to whether your character, eddie carbone, has something beyond just being a substitute father. >> yeah. >> rose: i mean, it's partly physical because of the way she comes and jumps up into -- on the top of his legs and it's clearly she's very affectionate with him. >> it's been played that way, an affectionate interest with the girl. i think he's in love with her, infatuated by her. she's 17 years old now. i think he doesn't have the emotional ability to articulate

how he feels or why, he loves cuddling her. she's been doing it since a baby. i have sons instead of daughters. i asked a number of fathers who have daughters, and i asked if there's a point in your daughter's life with you become aware of them sexually and they kind of glaze over. >> rose: you have to define what that means. >> it's an arena where there is a grown man in the house where you have a young girl on the cusp of womanhood, she loves cuddling him, practicing sex in a safe environment, he's stroking her leg. >> rose: including the wife see it. >> everyone sees its inappropriate. the italian element is very strong. the idea that yesterday wants respect, that he needs his name attend of the play, which a lot of miller protagonists do, but more importantly he's italian

catholic, he's promised a dying woman, says it three or four times in the play, that he promised the mother of the girl he's going to take care of her. and into their lives come this boy that he cannot quantify. he works on the docks with guys who never really speak to each other. his friend louis, i mean, what the hell, and eddie replies, sure. that's how men talk on the docks. they don't talk about records, motorcycles, jackets, all the things the young man has. you okay? i'm okay, see you later. they don't really speak to each other. this articulate boy arrives in the house, has an interest in the girl. >> rose: illegal immigrant and rose: to keep anybody fromhim. knowing. >> and the the alarm bells go off in edy's head, he's not right, not right for the girl,

not what he promised the dying mother about the kind of guy she would end up with. it might as well be a martian. >> rose: so he could have, back to the affection he feels for her, it could be he very well never felt that kind of sexual attraction and he just simply wants to take care of her, he wants to be protective of her. or could be, secondly that he does feel it but he knows it's a bridge too far. he knows he can't do that and be faithful to the dying promise he made -- >> or he feels it but can't articulate or even understand it. so what's interesting is i don't play in my mind, and the actor has to make the choice, i think, how you're going to play, whether you're interested in her or not inappropriately. >> rose: you don't make that choice? >> the choice i've made for myself, he's apair she's interesting to other men. he says, i don't like the looks they're giving you in the candy store with the heels on the

sidewalk, clack, clack, clack. so he's aware others are looking, but he's not looking. what he's seeing is their response, and i genuinely thinking again, coming to the thing of fathers and daughter, i think a father can see another male's interest in his daughter be but not necessarily feel that particular feeling himself and that's the arena i think eddie occupies. >> rose: what is it you want your performance to achieve? is it the ambivalence? >> well, miller's writing has the ambivalence. >> rose: right. my job is to play my own truth. so what i want to achieve in my performance is playing the truth of eddie carbone as i see him. so -- >> rose: as a playwright and actor. how are the roles of a playwright and actor. >> there is a difference. i play a particular way. friends of mine who come to see the play say, you are interested

in her, aren't you? i said, no, i'm not. so they're perceiving something that i'm not playing. so there is a level that exists which is the writing, which is miller. >> rose: yeah. asking you as an audience to see what you think about the situation. but there is a level -- >> rose: so he's actually asking everyone, knowing that they would be, anyway. what do you think of this? >> that in a nutshell, i think, is the purpose of theater. when i was lucky enough to win the olivier award back home, i hadn't really prepared a speech because, to be honest, i have been nominated for things in the past but never won anything. i was just happy upon there. i didn't really think of it in the terms. my name came up, i collected the reward and i hadn't generally thought about what to say. >> rose: a tony award, i assume. >> yes. and a week before, a young boy had come around to his mother to the stage door -- by the way, a lot to have the people used to come to the station to want to talk to the play -- and the boy said, what's the point of theater? he said, what's the point of

theater? and i couldn't answer him. but i went away and thought about it, and i think that that's the nub of the issue, why are we still going into a room, switching the lights off, watching a bunch of people pretending to be other people live and still coming away talking about it? and what we need from life experiences is the ability to sit there and judge ourselves against what we're seeing. people are going, would i behave like eddie? is he making the right choice? what he is she thinking and doing and behaving like that? in doing that, we're asking ourselves what it means to be human. >> rose: there is a purpose to theater, theater has been around a couple of thousand years and it's because it has value and the value is because it makes you think and feel and ask yourself questions about what you just saw. >> absolutely, and the purpose of art, all creativity, really, isn't it, to take us out of our everyday lives, to stop us worrying about e-mails and bills and the stuff of life, the rat

race, you know, just survival. isn't art and all painting, music, everything, is to take us somewhere else and make us think about something else. >> rose: is your role as an individual character to make them understood, to help us understand the way you portray them? we know who eddie carbone is. we know what drives him. if we're listening and watching carefully. >> absolutely. llains, that's an interesting dilemma because, you know, dlillens aren't -- villains reasoned supposed to be actor. >> rose: every actor i know plays a villain says i have to find something interesting about them. >> if you understand the motivation of a bad guy he becomes more accessible than somebody just downright evil. miller said we should weep no tears for eddie.

that's ironic. a lot of people are in tears at the end of the play. they find it very moving and really feel for what happens. i say are you feeling for catherine and his loss or eddie and his mistakes? and they say both. it's incredible emotional the journey you go on us with all and the fact at the end there are people incredibly moved by it. >> rose: two hours without intermission. >> yes. >> rose: you're almost in every scene. >> yes. >> rose: how hard is it to do that? >> it's exhilarating and incredibly exhausting and difficult, but once -- >> rose: draining? yes, but once you're in it, it just grabs you by the throat. >> rose: every night? every single performance. just before the place starts, i feel, how are we going to climb the mountain again? every single performance, i think, we're in the middle again? and by the end, you know, we've performed the play. >> rose: have all of your aspirations for acting been fulfilled?

>> not yet. there is still a way to go. >> rose: characters or just professional achievement? >> just we've rinew play and every new job and every new group of actors you work with and every new director, you learn something new, something else comes about, and just when you think you know how to do it and you know what you're doing, you challenge yourself and something else happens. i want to keep that happening. >> rose: you did television and then said no more television. >> yeah, well what happens in the u.k. -- i don't know if it's the same in america -- but having done theater and trained for theater, it's kind of a club. in theater, people watching you in plays, they offer you other plays and you tend to do that. if tv comes along and there is success you get offers in television and you do that. i spent ten years doing theater and then ten years doing television and then the movies came calling and people saw movies and said we like that guy, so i was suddenly in the movie club. so you don't tend to mover are

much between them in the beginning. now, after this, i'd love to do a movie and another play again. >> rose: what kind of character? >> what i love about theater is transformation. i love to get as far away from myself as i can, whether an accent, ko costume, big, super o movie, i don't know what it is. when i started out acting, those are the parts i gravitated to. something that made you different. i don't know how i would play myself and be a lover and a hero. also the u.k. and america have very different attitudes, i think. here you revere the hero. you revere the guy that can throw a punch, you know, grin, kiss the girl, win the day. we have with richard iii,.

>> rose: tell me the best lesson you got from acting. what has been the thing for you the thing you hung on to that made you as good as you are? >> that's a lovely compliment. i just see that my job is to believe, you know, create truth, because when you wrap people and you believe that they are connected to what they're doing and you believe what they're doing, it's rivetting, fascinating. think of documentaries where people are interviewed about real life events. there is something rivetting about somebody talking about something that happened and if you can create that in fiction and make it believable and truthful and absorbing, that's the best thing. there are a lot of practical things as well. i was at the same drama school as daniel lewis who came to see the play the other day. we reminisced and had a teacher who said if you sit on the front of the stage, don't look here.

obviously, the audience is out there. you need to be looking out there. you shouldn't ever be looking down here. >> rose: in this role of eddie carbone, did you go to the docks? how did you prepare for this? >> i felt him instinctively. i went down to red hook, had a look. >> rose: it was a great, interesting place. >> it's amazing. it's very bleak on the water and it's wonderful to look back to manhattan. there is a line in the play where he says to catherine, i want you to be in a lawyer's office, someplace in new york. >> rose: he wanted her to be a secretary. >> that's right. i always pointed when i went to london and i didn't know why. ought it into focus. itthere >> rose: thank you. lovely to talk about it. >> rose: "a view from the bridge" will be on for how long? >> till february 21, another five weeks or so. >> rose: you heard it here, another five weeks. back in a moment. stay with us. >> rose: king charles iii is a future history play from mike

bartlett. tim pigott-smith plays the newly crowned king of england following death of his mother queen elizabeth ii. king charles attempts to assert more power than his predecessor. the play is called brilliant. starting january 31. joining me the stars, tim pigott-smith, margot leicester, oliver chris and lydia wilson. i am pleased to have them at this table for the first time everybody is talking about this and january 31 is approaching and you better get there if you can. what is it about the royal family? i do a morning television show, all morning television shows are fascinated by every generation. what else it? -- what is it? why are we fascinating by royalty? >> it is increasingly rare in the modern world where these people exists. it's seen in the play where a

commoner comes into the palace and says, why is this stuff still here? but if you're in london and happen to see the horse guards going down to the mouth to the palace. >> rose: the first place you want to go the buckingham palace. >> it is fantastic. >> rose: what's also interesting about it, the drama and all of what's happened to the royal family is so fascinating. >> well, of course, the whole of the diana saga was lived out in public and our play touches on that area, the one area where sometimes when i'm performing it, i feel, oh, gosh, this is terribly sensitive, this whole era came to a desperate end. you couldn't have made that story up, could you? >> rose: no, and you play such anandan interesting figure. how would you describe her relationship to her husband? >> devoted. i think in the play she's

clearly a wife who loves her husband and that's really the dominant thing. i'm sure that's true in real life. i think that's the motor engine for maybe all the unraveling of the charles and diana marriage and all that happened and the love affair that began between charles and camilla when they were young endured and through her separate marriage, his separate marriage, and i do think why people are fascinated by the royal family is because it's the one overlap. we're all members of a family ourselves and, so, you can't identify with a prime minister or a president quite the same. they're not the family unit. but what you have in the royals is a family like and unlike your own. i mean, i would say it's the epitome of what they call blended families now, you know,

when you have inlaws and outlaws and stepchildren and it's very interesting to see people watch it playing itself out on a big public stage, the magazines and the social media outlets are so huge. >> rose: is charles perceived differently in america than he is? >> you couldn't have asked it bet that are that, charlie. >> rose: there is not a great sense of him here, i don't believe. >> no, that's kind of what i feel. >> rose: not a sense of what he does. there's no sense of the role he plays. even knowing what i know about his passion for architecture and how he's been outspoken in terms -- >> very influential in terms of drawing in england. >> rose: exactly. he's immense. he does sometimes three things a day. >> rose: what are you impressed by him? what is it about him the man

that you know? >> i only met him once and he leaned towards me and said any work about? (laughter) which is pretty good. but i'm impressed that people tell me the last six years he's been learning persian or arabic because she feels the power axis in the world is changing and he wants to be able to communicate. that's impressive, isn't it? >> rose: i think he spends at least a moment every day thinking how can i prepare for the moment that is coming to me? >> you do, i'm sure. (laughter) >> rose: we can't have a conversation without talking about the queen, who it seems everybody -- does she have anybody who doesn't like her except anti-royalists? >> come on, you say something. i don't think that anyone could begrudge the way she has undertaken her duties over such an extended period of time. if you disagree with her

position, if you disagree with some of her views, she has undertaken her duties with such con sirnt dignity and devotion over such a considerable period of time. tim mentioned it before about maybe the queen now elizabeth ii feels anointed, whether charles does or not who knows. the queen took the world to an extraordinarily different place when queen elizabeth became queen. >> rose: how did you deal with that? >> homosexuality was illegal. the tribunal movement was huge. modern life has changed so extraordinarily under her reign, her 70-year reign. it's a different world now and she's been very much a bridge between that period changing. she's been such a firm fixture that when she does finally -- go -- i think it will be very

interesting to see what will happen because the next monarch will be the first of a new age. >> rose: prime ministers come and go, parties come and go, the queen stays. >> the family, from my parents' generation, my father was born in 1910, my mother in 1912, so they lived through two world wars and in the second world war the royal family particularly was phenomenally important to the country, gave them a sense of support and dignity and they went out there, you know, and they visited the areas that have been blitzed and they tried to become involved. so my mother, she was like an auntie. she was like one of our family. >> it's extraordinary about representation. the queen and let's say the monarch have to be a figurehead for the entire nation and their subjects and, as times change underneath them, they have to

still represent the country. so while the queen very rarely expresses opinions in the whole scottish independence thing. she refused to get involved. this was an interesting thing in the play because the monarch has to represent a country when homosexuality is illegal, and she she also has to represent her country when homosexuality is legal. and if she had expressed an opinion one way or another on either point, she would have immediately tied herself in a knot she would have been unable to get out of. that's what she managed to embody so effortlessly, i think. >> i think diana introduced she wanted to enlarge that notion into the queen of hearts thing, which i think is a big area that i will be interested in what william does in terms of -- i mean, the real prince william. not you. i'm thinking of you. you are his representative.

>> okay, i'll do it -- (laughter) >> the fact he those his mother's engagement ring, the fact he clearly reveres and loves his mother and would -- i think it would be very interesting to see what he does introduce because, yes, she is an icon, diana, but very air brushed out of recent history. it is very much the queen, the very tight royal family on the balcony. i would say that she was the joker in the pack for them in terms of wanting that continuity. >> rose: a lot of this is as we've suggested in the introduction is about the king, king charles. how do we imagine that? what has the playwright tone for us here to -- done for us here to construct the kind of -- what? >> he's take an whole bunch of very commonly-held, popular perceptions of who these people

are and created the situation of making charles king. and when you read the play to begin with, you think, this is quite amusing and clever for about ten minutes, and that's when you think something needs to happen, and that's when charles has the first scene with the prime minister and you discover charles is somehow interested in defending the freedom of the press and that's a great dramatic coup. then you think, help, this is a play! >> rose: and american audiences have appreciation of the relationship between king and queen because of what happened on broadway with helen maren and the meeting of the prime minister. i remember tony blair talking about when he first came in to see queen elizabeth and the trepidation because they were telling him exactly as prime minister what you will do because you will be in the presence of the queen.

how good a father was prince charles to prince william? >> well, when i was chatting to them on the phone yesterday, they were telling me -- (laughter) >> rose: did that form an attitude of how you portrayed william? >> i think it does. again, from my research, such as they are, i was quite surprised to discover -- because it's not a popular view in the press because i don't think it's particularly media friendly, but actually the two boys have a terrific relationship with their father. i think people like to imagine that, you know, they were their mother's children and their mother was cruelly ripped from them and their father is this kind of cold, detached, bumbling guy who cares more about architecture than his own family. i just don't think that's true. from all the impressions i've gotten, from everything i've read and people i've spoken to,

they're a super close family. charles has been a terrifically supportive and loving father. they absolutely love and adore him as anybody would their father, and i think -- >> rose: it's the only person they really have. >> yeah, i think so. i think the drama belongs on the stage and in the tabloids. i think the reality is these are these kids' dad. they love him, he loves them, they're in a very unique position. >> rose: it's formed every day that what happened to them as royalty. >> i'm sure they know of their duties. they don't know anything else. they're born into it. if you're born a tiger, you grow up a tiger. >> rose: what influence was camilla have on him today and what influence might she have on him as king? >> i don't know about influence so much as i always think of her

as an enabler, a source of confidence for him. i always feel, and i used to do, when i look at the interaction between charles and his own parents, his mom and his dad, that there is a little boy who's never felt quite adored by his dad, as i agree with you, charles does to william and harry. so i think he was never quite mothered in the way that probably little boys need to be, and i think camilla is a great -- if i say a mothering figure, in that way, a maternal thing which is just to do with taking care of. i mean, men can be maternal. it's putting him first. the unconditional love thing. that's what i mean. he's not -- >> she's terribly good for him. i think she's probably good for

his relationship with the boys, too. >> rose: probably the one person who could say to him you have to do better or different. >> i think the play is probably very accurate about -- i don't think she could influence him insofar as his interests or policy, and i do think -- i mean, the play picks the issue of conflict being the press, but i think charles will have difficulty. i think the environment, which is the huge thing for him, suppose fracking rights come up, the rights of various companies to -- that would be you take a , you're in trouble. yeah, could be. >> i don't think she would have the first clue. >> rose: this is what mike

bartlett told the "wall street journal." he said kate and camilla are two hugely different outsiders to the family from very different backgrounds but both strongly invested in getting things their own way. hello? hello? >> yeah, i think kate's particular angle as an outsider, she's a very middle class story and her grandmother apparently had a buggy to replicate the one in the papers of the royal family and they call her the duchess and they grew up with the family of the curtains and the memorabilia. i imagine what she's invested in is what it means to the common people. so in the play when things get shaky for the royal family, what they lose sight of is -- i

picture a curtain with the 50th anniversary memorabilia plate and what that means to england and i think for kate that's the thing she's able to keep in mind because she has that privilege of being outside. >> rose: by all appearances, she's done a terrific job. >> yeah. and by all appearances is the best way of saying it. >> she produced a male and a little girl. that's pretty good. >> rose: how would king charles be different from queen elizabeth? >> i think that's what's brilliant about the play because it moves into that wedge, doesn't it? he said he wants to be hands on. you know, we have this thing called the black spider letters. his writing is apparently very spidery and he writes a lot of letters lobbying for his position and this has caused some stress because, of course, as the prime minister says to me in the play, you're not elected, and you have no right to do this, you're just living off

taxpayers' money, you can't do this. but i think he will want to be involved. if he comes the see the play, he might be careful how he does that now. >> rose: that's an interesting question. has he seen it? >> no, i don't think so. i don't think it would be too bad for him but i think it would be uncomfortable about the way the monarchy might go because the second act goes off -- >> rose: he hasn't had a chance to see it? >> he will have plenty of chances to see it. somebody photo shopped a wonderful picture of a queen on facebook. (laughter) >> rose: what do you want us to come away with? >> well, i mean, he's pictured as a man of principle. >> rose: denied or delayed

ambition? >> one of my lines early on, such a brilliant play, i say, my life has been a lingering for the throne. i think it's a wonderful discourse. just hanging around, waiting, you know. i even imagine sometimes if mum was dead and i was in charge, you know. but he could in his '80s by the time he comes to be king, charlie. >> rose: knowing what you know about the life of a royal, would you have liked, could you have imagined, would you have found any satisfaction in that kind of life? >> oh, no. to me, it seems like a night nightmare. i write on an instagram picture, if you placate for long enough, are you kate where scottish rites lock in? my friend said, you get to come home in three weeks.

kate can never go home. i would find it frightening to wake up with that sense of vertigo that i'm up herenned i can't ever go back down. >> rose: yes, i think that would be the majority. my sense is that, you know, william, he can do a lot of things. >> i have huge admiration for him. i didn't think about the royal family. i'm not a monarchist, but i've developed a huge success for the monarchy in england and for william, particularly. i mean, the way -- you're 14 or 15 years old and your mother dies and there is an horrific, public dissection. the grace with which that young adolescent dealt with that situation in the public eye, it's extraordinary. i mean, i would be in the desert sucking peyote out of a baked bean still. he went on with his life.

he was a rescue pilot. now pilot and ambulance in norfolk. i can't imagine a better person to represent me as a monarch. this guy, i will happily stand behind that guy. >> rose: don't you want to go see this now? here's a play bill, king charles iii with the tape over his mouth, i'm not going to talk. thank you all. great to have you here. >> thank you. >> rose: thank you for joining us. see you next time. for more about this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

♪ >> announcer: this is "nightly business report," with tyler mathisen and sue herera. eating up. the deep freeze may, may be coming out of the january market. but what does history say about the year ahead when the markets stumbled so badly at first? >> sharp and swift. oil prices skyrocket. but with no obvious trigger and the world still awash in crude, is it safe to say the worst of the selling may be over? >> digging out. if you need someone to ply your driveway following this winter storm there's an app for that. all that and more tonight on "nightly business report" for friday, january 22nd. good evening, everyone, and welcome. stocks pulled it off. they went higher for the week. just a few days ago that didn't em