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SUNDAY EXPRESS January 2, 2011

Films

I’d love to talk to the FROM PREVIOUS PAGE

wanted to be a filmmaker from the age of 12, certainly hopes Her Majesty sees the film, not least because, he feels, it is a sympathetic portrait of her father. “Through the research Colin and I did we became very fond of him, independent of what we think about the monarchy,” reveals Hooper. “I think we made an affectionate portrait so I would love the Queen to see it in that respect.”

theatre company championing the play was Australian,” explains Hooper. “He had once delivered something to Geoffrey in Melbourne and remembered his address. So the script was delivered to his doorstep unsolicited. Unbelievably, Geoffrey didn’t throw it in the bin.” That was in Christmas 2007. With Rush on board and Colin Firth signed NTERESTINGLY, he believes up to play Bertie, the Duke of York, who the story is a “very good reluctantly ascends the throne after prism” through which to the abdication of his brother Edward understand the Queen, VIII in 1936, the cameras were poised notably in regard to her strong to roll when another stroke of good sense of duty. “King George fortune came the filmmakers’ way: the never went, ‘Oh well, I just won’t speak discovery of Logue’s diaries. on the radio’, which he could have Giving a detailed account of his done,” he says. “I think the Queen has dealings with the King spanning 20 the same unflinching sense of duty and years, they had lain undisturbed in the that’s very admirable. If you’re going to attic of Logue’s grandson Mark, until a attack the Queen it can’t be on the researcher on the film tracked him basis that she’s not doing her duty. down in north London. She’s not like a Russian oligarch who is “Here was a handwritten account of all about the pursuit of pleasure.” the relationship between the speech In some ways, Hooper thinks, King therapist and the King, never read by George saved the monarchy after the any royal historian, biographer or abdication crisis because he was the Royal Family member and I was the most human of monarchs, a fact first to get my hands on it,” says brought home by his very public Hooper, shaking his head in wonder. struggle to speak (the “Given that it was hard film opens with his to find anything on attempt to address the Lionel Logue, it was an crowd at the 1925 amazing treasure trove.” Empire Exhibition). Hooper and Seidler, “He wasn’t a remote 73, a British-born figure. When he writer hitherto best reached out to people known for penning the in their suffering little seen Francis during the war there Coppola film Tucker: was a real sense of The Man And His empathy there. He Dream, set about wasn’t speaking from a rejigging the script. gilded cage.” Some of the film’s His childhood, with best lines come its horrible nannies straight from Logue’s and neglectful parents, diaries. They also also helped “debunk detailed the truth the notion of privilege” behind the King’s says Hooper, who keynote address to the sought to portray the nation on the outbreak King as a troubled of war that forms the picture’s climax. MAVERICK: Therapist Lionel Everyman. “It was all about trying to find A newspaper Logue was a former actor ways of seeing him as a photograph had shown human first and a royal second.” the King in full naval uniform standing Hooper was determined to avoid the at an ornate microphone in a grand pomp and pageantry of most “royal” room, but Hooper says: “It was movies. “Every ounce of my being propaganda. In reality he made the wanted to subvert the cliché of what a speech in a funny little back room that royal film is and I hope that’s clear Logue had redecorated cheerfully to from the movie.” relax the King, who delivered the The serendipity that blessed the speech with his jacket off, tie undone production could be said to extend to and the window open.” Hooper’s own childhood as the offspring of an Anglo-Australian EVERTHELESS, relationship that bore uncanny there was one source parallels to that in the film. that proved off-limits: His father Richard had experienced the Queen. As the his own traumatic childhood, losing his King’s daughter, she father in the war when aged three, and was better placed than was packed off to a harsh boarding anyone alive to describe his struggles school. It was only through his to overcome the speech impediment. marriage to writer Meredith that, “Only she knows, for example, what Bertie and Logue-like, he managed to his stammer was like in private,” says Hooper, “but the frustration is you can’t come to terms with his past. “All I can say is the story of an Aussie go and talk to her. Colin Firth says if unpacking an Englishman’s childhood you’re playing a taxi driver you can is something I really knew about, it’s so drive round with a cabbie or be a culturally specific,” attests Hooper. “I cabbie but if you’re playing a king you went from having a father who was not can’t hang out with the Queen.” brilliantly engaged to a father who now When I remind him that Kenneth describes me as one of his ribs, and I Branagh spent time with Prince have my mother to thank for that.” Charles while preparing to play As we do too, for the movie. Henry V, Hooper quips: “Perhaps Colin doesn’t have the same pulling power.” ¬ The Kings’ Speech is released on Oxford-educated Hooper, who had Friday

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ON SET: Tom Hooper consults actors Colin Firth, right, and Geoffrey Rush during filming of The King’s Speech

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