A new Off-Broadway play has a shocking title, but it plays against something familiar: our obsession with the private lives of royals. Prince Faggot<\/em><\/a>, which reopened on September 11 after a sold-out summer run, imagines Prince George<\/a> all grown up, as a young gay man whose personal life is under constant scrutiny.<\/p>\n Playwright Jordan Tannahill was partly inspired by photos of a four-year-old Prince George that went viral<\/a> in 2017. The prince perched in the open door of a helicopter, daintily clutching his face in apparent elation. Online, people dubbed him a \u201cgay icon\u201d and speculated about his future orientation. (To be clear, the royals have yet to make a public comment on the sexuality of the heir to the throne, who is currently 12 years old.) The pictures also got Tannahill\u2019s attention. \u201cMaking no comment on George\u2019s sexuality, whatever that might be when he grows up,\u201d he says now to Town & Country<\/em>, \u201cthey really reminded me of photos of myself as a young gay child\u201d\u2014expressive, unguarded, and unfiltered.<\/p>\n John McCrea as Prince George and Mihir Kumar as Dev Chatterjee in the Off-Broadway play Prince Faggot<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n Tannahill wrote his first draft of the play in 2020 while living in London. He hoped to produce it there, but says \u201cit frankly proved too controversial.\u201d Understandably so: the show imagines a grown-up George\u2019s love life in graphic detail. The casting might also ruffle feathers across the pond: the queer ensemble includes a Black, gay man as the Prince of Wales<\/a>, a trans woman as his wife, and a Black, trans woman as Princess Charlotte<\/a>. The script critiques the monarchy, but Tannahill insists Prince Faggot<\/em> isn\u2019t \u201csome kind of takedown of the crown or broad satire.\u201d He sees the characters as \u201cfallible [and] complex\u201d people in a play about queerness.<\/p>\n Critics have acknowledged that complexity. Vulture’s Jackson McHenry noted the \u201cdelicate and rich territory<\/a>\u201d Tannahill explores, while quibbling with the dramatic structure and praising the direction. New Yorker<\/em> critic Helen Shaw called it \u201cintermittently superb<\/a>,\u201d while the New York Times<\/em>‘s Jesse Green said it \u201cfinds its way to splendor.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n Tannahill is joining a long line of writers drawn to royal speculation. In 2011, around what would have been Princess Diana\u2019s 50th birthday, imagining her later life became a cottage industry. Monica Ali wrote a novel<\/u><\/a> with Diana staging her own death and escaping to America; Newsweek<\/em> ran a cover story<\/u><\/a> that imagined her seeking out \u201cstrategic\u201d Botox and trying \u201cat least two\u201d marriages. Onstage, the 2014 faux-Shakespearean succession drama King Charles III<\/em> was a hit in Britain and later reached Broadway. And on screen, a fictionalized version of Queen Charlotte <\/a>(1744-1818) has been central to the success of Bridgerton<\/em><\/a> and a spinoff series <\/a>bearing her name. In a less speculative vein, Peter Morgan has made a career of pulling back the curtain on the second Elizabethan era, from The Queen<\/em><\/a> to The Crown<\/em><\/a>. This isn’t even the first fictional version of Prince George: a short-lived animated series on HBO Max, The Prince<\/em>, depicted George as a Machiavellian eight year old.<\/p>\n Series like The Crown<\/em>, which starred Dominic West as Prince Charles and Olivia Williams as Camilla Parker Bowles, fictionalize the lives of real royals for dramatic effect.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n Tannahill doesn\u2019t consume much of that content\u2014or the sappy royal romances that surged after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex went public with their romance<\/a> in 2016. \u201cGenerally speaking, this work is not for me,\u201d he says, though he concedes that royal stories offer compelling ways \u201cto explore themes of power and responsibility and family.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s also aware of how the theme has entered queer media\u2014for example, Casey McQuiston\u2019s bestselling novel Red, White, and Royal Blue<\/em><\/a> which paired a fictional British prince with the son of a U.S. president, and the Netflix series Young Royals, <\/em>which followed a Swedish prince falling for another boy at boarding school. Lisa Ambj\u00f6rn, a co-creator of Young Royals<\/em>, says Sweden\u2019s royal family felt almost like a technicality when she was young. \u201cWe were built on socialistic values,\u201d she says. Nevertheless, she saw royalty as a useful framing device for a coming-of-age story. \u201cBeyond the queer aspect, most teenagers feel like the world is watching,\u201d says Ambj\u00f6rn. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter if that\u2019s true or not, because that\u2019s what you\u2019re experiencing.\u201d<\/p>\n Edvin Ryding as Wilhelm and Omar Rudberg as Simon in the Netflix series Young Royals<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n McQuiston also saw royal life as a powerful narrative tool. The author only followed the royal family casually<\/u><\/a> before writing Red, White, and Royal Blue<\/em>, but reading the romance novel The Royal We<\/em> left them interested in the family\u2019s power dynamics. \u201cEveryone sees everything you do,\u201d they told SheReads<\/u><\/a>, \u201cbut there\u2019s a whole other story happening behind closed doors.\u201d<\/p>\n Some royals have started to capitalize on public interest in their private lives. Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex have been at it since 2020, when they signed lucrative deals with Netflix and Spotify. (Their latest hit, With Love, Meghan<\/em>, just dropped a second season.) Lord Ivar Mountbatten\u2014the first openly gay member of Britain’s extended royal family\u2014competed on The Traitors<\/em> earlier this year. And later this fall, Princess M\u00e4rtha Louise of Norway and her husband, the shaman Durek Verrett, will produce and star in a new documentary about their love story. But fiction still has a monopoly on the private lives of royals in line for the throne.<\/p>\n Speaking to T&C<\/em>, Tannahill projected a practiced agnosticism about royalty, something close to McQuiston and Ambj\u00f6rn\u2019s detachment. But Prince Faggot<\/em> is more provocative than Red, White, and Royal Blue<\/em> or Young Royals<\/em>, from the explicit title to the use of real people\u2014and it\u2019s also more political. Tannahill, who is Canadian, grew up as a subject of the British Commonwealth. In a 2020 essay<\/u><\/a> about the viral photos of Prince George for Now Toronto<\/em>, he wrote, \u201cThe monarchy is my enemy. Yet, I cannot help feel a kinship with this little royal fawn. It\u2019s the same kinship I feel when I consider all queer children, […] a kind of sublime, tender protectiveness.\u201d<\/p>\n That tension animates the play. In the first scene, cast members appear as performers about to put on a show and comment on the premise. Mihir Kumar, who later appears as George\u2019s first serious lover, gives what Tannahill calls \u201ca totally non-fiction account of my journey with that photograph.\u201d K. Todd Freeman (later Prince William) critiques the other performers\u2019 willingness to discuss a child\u2019s sexuality. That framing device gives Tannahill\u2019s play some guardrails: a mission statement for protecting all of its subjects.<\/p>\n The show builds towards an argument that its queer and trans performers need more protection than Prince George, who is insulated from speculation about his private life and protected from any real danger. That argument is presented most urgently in a blistering monologue about the true meaning of royalty delivered by N\u2019yomi Allure Stewart, who plays several characters including Princess Charlotte. That speech, which closes the play, is inspired by an interview Tannahill conducted with Stewart. (The script calls all the other material \u201cfictional,\u201d though the performers helped shape it<\/u><\/a>.)<\/p>\n Stewart is a fixture of New York City\u2019s queer Ballroom community<\/u><\/a> who earned the title \u201cPrincess of the Pier\u201d for her performances at the Christopher Street Pier, where queer dancers have gathered since the 1970s<\/u><\/a>. Stewart wears that title proudly. In her final monologue, she talks about the Black, trans icons who made her a princess. She explained the lineage to Town & Country<\/em>: \u201cI come from women who put themselves in danger to live in their truth so I could have surgery today and feel affirmed in my skin. I come from women who took care of children who couldn\u2019t be taken care of by their blood family. I come from women who put their lives and their bodies in danger to hustle up some coin, to feed themselves and those kids.\u201d In the end, Prince Faggot<\/em> asks its audience to care about that kind of royalty.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/hips.hearstapps.com\/hmg-prod\/images\/d6005d79-8ee7-4421-aca3-cc8471a5d52e.jpg?crop=1xw:1xh;center,top&resize=980:*\" "\\"The")
<\/p>\n![\"Young](\"https:\/\/hips.hearstapps.com\/hmg-prod\/images\/7a833575-a48f-423c-b611-41b0718a86f9.jpg?crop=1xw:1xh;center,top&resize=980:*\" "\\"Young")
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