No stranger to a high-stakes family drama, The Crown breakout swaps Buckingham Palace for the Battle of Hastings in latest series, King & Conqueror. A fast-rising golden boy of our screens, not to mention Burberry campaign face – he’s also got his sights set on the director’s chair. The only obstacle? His schedule.

“At times, it felt like being on another planet,” Luther Ford tells me. The actor is recounting the Icelandic filming days of his latest project, King & Conqueror  – BBC and CBS’s medieval epic devoted to the treachery and tumult that preceded the decisive Battle of Hastings. A bedrock of the English history curriculum, the 1066 clash is brought to life in stark, immersive fashion across eight episodes by Ford and a banner of screen mainstays (James Norton, Emily Beechman and Clémence Poésey – to name but a few). 

The show combines the bloody violence of Game of Thrones with enough family drama to fill a series of Succession. It’s transportive in ways blackboard-backed retellings of the conflict in draughty classrooms sometimes weren’t. And for Ford, who found fame depicting a more recent chapter of British history, as Prince Harry in Netflix’s The Crown, making King & Conqueror quite literally saw him enveloped by new surrounds. “As someone from London, being around mountains and volcanoes is crazy,” he says, still in awe at the rural Nordic landscapes that were chosen to embody the rugged English downs of the era. “It was so grounding to have something so much bigger than you, that’s been there for thousands of years, in front of you,” he says. 

It’s a late Friday afternoon when we meet over Zoom. Ford’s now back in his East London home, the picture of comfort in an oversized sweatshirt. He’s unassuming and affable, pensive in conversation but unafraid to punctuate answers with a chuckle. August is nearing its end, leaves are cluttering pavements, and the temperature decline is proving harder to ignore. But, “It’s been a really good summer,” he reflects. The last few months have taken him to Spain and Norway for holidays and, along with the rest of Hackney’s twentysomethings, to Victoria Park’s All Points East music festival. While he enjoyed the soul-tinged R&B and the elaborate staging of headliner Sault, partying into the night isn’t really Ford’s thing. “I like day festivals,” he says, “but my first instinct if someone asks me to go out is to say no.”

Born in North London, the fresh-faced actor has long found himself embroiled in a love-hate relationship with the city he grew up in. The British Film Institute’s discounted cinema tickets for young people are “the best thing here” – alongside his friends. But he loathes the high prices of quite literally everything else. “We’re getting to the point now where it’s a bit of a joke.”

Unlike other 25-year-olds, however, there’s been a lot more to Ford’s summer than simply weathering the city’s extortionately-priced pints. Days before our interview, King & Conqueror releases in the UK. He plays Tostig Godwinson, the youngest brother of Harold II (played by Norton, whose production company Rabbit Track Pictures also handled the series). “I can feel the bowl cut on my head all the time,” Ford laughs, searching for his character’s utilitarian do with his hands. “I felt more of a peasant than a nobleman, which was maybe quite humbling.” 

Unappealing hairstyles aside, Tostig is kept busy with a storyline that spans love, tragedy and a good old helping of conspiracy. Like any compulsive period drama, rather than existing as a straightforward retelling of events, there are embellishments at play. A “filling in of the blanks,” as Ford refers to it. But the true events at its core have a perennial relevance. “History is about repetition, and that’s what I think makes the show interesting,” he explains. “It’s relatable because it’s based on a basic thing: two men who are desperate for power. That always exists – that’s timeless.”

“It was by far the most fun I’ve ever had making something,” Ford continues. Cast downtime would sometimes take the form of a dip in the thermal springs of nearby Hvammsvik. And when the cameras were rolling, the show’s fighting scenes – a career first for Ford – proved the standout. “Those kinds of sequences are when it’s the most immersive. You have a huge number of people in these huge sets they’ve built. A random collection of [people who have left] their families to go to Iceland, to make something about a battle that happened 1,000 years ago. The environment feels like you’re in some kind of simulation. It really made me clock how mad this job is.” 

His reality today is one that the Ford of a few years ago would have a hard time imagining for himself. Labelling himself as “a bit of a strange teenager”, he wasn’t allowed to watch TV or films growing up. He didn’t own a mobile phone for the best part of his adolescence. Instead, he filled his weekends making films with his best friend in places where he felt like he could escape London, like the untamed acres of Hampstead Heath. “We’d show them to our parents, but there was zero ambition to put them anywhere,” he says. “We went to a boys’ state school, so we thought, ‘If anyone sees this, we’re going to be killed.’” The films would often feature choreographed battles – “So King & Conqueror felt very full-circle in terms of a group of people pretending to fight in fields,” he laughs.

Although he appeared in these projects (“calling them films is generous,” he quips), Ford initially assumed his career would be spent behind the camera as a filmmaker. It’s why he left London for Bournemouth to study film production, only to spend two years of lectures on Zoom in the midst of the pandemic. He looks back on the time fondly, though. “I feel like I lived my teenage years there. Nothing was open, so we would walk around the suburbs and go to the park to drink. Weirdly, it was really fun – I kind of miss it.” 

After university, he anticipated he’d spend his days like any other film graduate, working as a runner or assistant at a London studio. But in his last year of studies, the trajectory of his life changed with a single WhatsApp message from his brother’s girlfriend. It was a link to a casting call – Netflix was looking for a young actor to play Prince Harry in the final season of its Emmy and Golden Globe-winning behemoth, The Crown. 

Sat in a dark bedroom, hoodie up and with zero training or experience, Ford filmed a tape. “I was trying my best to be ignored,” he admits. The next day, he received a response. Three weeks of whirlwind auditions and table reads with the casting director and Ed McVey (who portrayed Prince William) later, and the part was his. “Then it was scary, because I was like, ‘Oh fuck. This is not a joke.’” Unsurprisingly, his brother’s girlfriend has now shown interest in becoming a casting director. 

First gigs are always going to be nerve-racking, but it’s taken up a notch or two when the project is already critically acclaimed, watched around the globe, and an entire nation feels as if they personally know the character you’re playing. How did a 23-year-old handle that pressure? “I didn’t feel it, because I wasn’t an actor,” Ford responds coolly. “I was very willingly going to give it a go, but I used my naivety to take the pressure off.” Coming to the role experienced, he believes, would have made the expectation overwhelming.

When he looks back, making it through The Crown came by taking it scene by scene. “It’s funny to watch yourself learn how to do something very publicly,” he reflects. “The moments when I’m learning are all being captured, and that’s the product.” He’s quick to add that he never wants to stop learning, whether he’s portraying a South London crime boss in 2024 Netflix thriller Black Doves or appearing alongside Peter Capaldi in Criminal Record, which he’ll join for its upcoming series. “In some ways, being the lead is less interesting in a way. Like, what, so I don’t get to be with those actors who are way better and interesting than me?” The best advice he’s received so far came from Capaldi: “‘Nobody knows what they’re doing.’ He was so adamant about it, and it’s true. Ultimately, everyone’s winging it.” 

Set in the late-90s/early-00s, the storylines that make up Ford’s season of The Crown are anchored in the volatile relationships between public figures and the media. It’s a part of his own career that, as his profile grows project by project, he’s approaching mindfully, with self-preservation a top priority. “I try not to represent myself too visibly,” he claims, and scrolling through his Instagram, you can tell. Quickly, he says, he learned to refrain from checking comments left on social media, a place where opinions tend to exist in polarities. “Also, I don’t read the comments on Daily Mail articles,” he adds. “That was a mistake.” 

His approach to fame makes him feel wise beyond his years and bleeds into his newfound presence in the fashion world, too. It’s another universe where he prefers to inhabit a character – whether shooting his Man About Town cover, appearing in lavish corduroy tailoring in Burberry’s Winter 2025 campaign, or walking the runway for Miu Miu. 

He compares the latter, which took place at Paris Fashion Week last March, to a film production. “It’s crazy, the scale, the amount of people behind it. It didn’t require anything of me other than doing a little walk,” he recalls. “But it’s scary, because it’s so simple that it’s really hard. The beginning of the runway was a flight of stairs. I was like, ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, really?’” Sure, dressing for lunches with Saint Laurent in Venice or for a Dior show is fun, but when he’s not working, comfort takes priority. “I’ve developed a bad habit of wearing hats all the time. But there’s something comforting about wearing a hat,” he adds – although he’s not wearing one today, his flame-coloured locks simply framing his face instead. 

Ford is a veritable fashion darling, yes. But minus the haughty demeanour that could come in tow. In some ways, he’s still the unassuming teenager who felt obliged to conceal his filmmaking efforts from his school peers. He’s hesitant, even now, to fully claim the title of ‘actor’, in part due to his unconventional path into the industry. “It’s almost like I need to give myself permission to call myself an actor,” he admits. However, he’s also simply preserving space for the residing ambition to eventually bring those filmmaking intentions to life. “The right thing for me to do is build a foundation with acting, because I really am enjoying it.” But doing so additionally gives him a front-row seat to the big leagues of directing – an opportunity to gain insights on the craft from those trusted to helm the major projects he’s become a regular on. “It’s one of the greatest things about it for me, because the directing part of my mind is always active when I’m on set.” 

Understandably, he hasn’t exactly been twiddling his thumbs as of late, so time to focus on any budding ideas for his own films has been limited. “I find that acting encourages you to spend a lot of time thinking about yourself. With directing and filmmaking, you need to look outward. It’s about how you see the world.” Editing is the part of the process he enjoys the most, while the likes of Spike Lee, Bradley Cooper and Harris Dickinson are figures he looks up to for their ability to occupy dual careers. “Harris is 29 and has his own film out. That’s kind of mind-blowing. You’re like, ‘Wow, this person is just prolific.’” 

Whether as a director or actor – preferably in a villain role if it’s the latter – Ford wants to head back to the 70s or 80s next. “There’s something about young people in that era, how they talk, their charisma, the lack of polish. It feels sincere and earnest. Maybe it’s because their lives aren’t lived through presenting themselves,” he ponders. “Look at actors today, everyone is scared of being seen as ungrateful or impolite. I find them like football players, where it’s like, ‘Oh god! They’re saying that thing again!’” He’s also drawn to the decade-defining subcultures and movements of yesteryear. “What’s the equivalent for our generation? How do we define ourselves differently? We’re so homogenised now.”

Tackling an arthouse film is high on the list, too, but ultimately, Ford says he’d be happy creating anything – that’s when he feels the most fulfilled. With acting, he thrives on the challenges and surprises that each new role brings, feeling more confident by the day. “You have to be experienced to feel confident,” he says. “I used to think that acting was quite uncreative. I think the difference is between being passive and getting through it, versus coming to the set with ideas, which is what all the really good actors I’ve worked with do.” 

With the release of King & Conqueror, he realised that this – the process – is exactly where the magic lies. “We’re taught to believe that the product is where it all is, but I realised that the ‘doing’ is where it happens. And that makes me want to do it really, really well.”