Natalie Portman Recalls Meeting King Charles At A Star Wars Premiere

Natalie Portman is looking back on her Star Wars days, including her brief encounter with King Charles at a movie premiere.

Portman stopped by Watch What Happens Live on Dec. 4 to promote Netflix’s May December. During the show, host Andy Cohen asked about her meeting with the British monarch at the London premiere of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace in 1999.

“I remember Prince Charles, he was then Prince Charles, asked me if I was in the originals,” Portman recalled. “I was like, ‘No, I’m 18!’ But he was very friendly.”

Nine years later, Portman bumped into then-Prince Charles once again, this time at the 2008 premiere of The Other Boleyn Girl in London’s Leicester Square.

Portman Is “Open To” More Star Wars

Portman played the character of Padmé Amidala throughout the Star Wars prequel trilogy, which consists of 1999’s The Phantom Menace, 2002’s Attack of the Clones, and 2005’s Revenge of the Sith.

Appearing on Watch What Happens Live, Portman also shared that “no one has asked” her to return to the Star Wars franchise despite being “open to it,” and described the sci-fi prequel trilogy as “amazing.”

“It was the first time I worked digitally. I don’t think anyone was shooting that way then,” she recalled. “It was my first time working with a green screen. It was a whole new set of skills to pick up and a whole new world to enter.”

Director Taika Waititi, who is currently working on the next Star Wars movie, revealed to Rolling Stone in 2022 that he once asked Portman if she’d like to star in the franchise — forgetting she had already done so as Padmé Amidala.

Recalling the awkward encounter, Portman told GQ: “I thought he was joking. He’s such a joker that I thought it was a joke. And then afterward he said in some interview that he was like cringing afterward.”