Among all the tributes that were released on social media from Thursday evening after the death of Elizabeth II was announced, the message from @paddingtonbear also stood out. “Thank you Ma’am, for everything,” wrote the bear, a tweet that has been liked thousands of times. Paddington in other words, the fictional children’s book bear, who has become especially big thanks to two wildly popular films. The tweet was a reference to a popular short video from June, made to celebrate Elisabeth’s platinum anniversary. Paddington arrives for tea at Buckingham Palace, wreaks havoc there, and the Queen reveals that she always has a marmalade sandwich in her famous handbag.
It’s a brilliant one and a half minute promo for Paddington Bear, the royals and the British creative industry. The queen is played by the queen and she does so with conviction. She had done this before, in front of a global audience, when her entrance to the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics was preceded by a scene featuring James Bond (Daniel Craig), a jump from a helicopter and a perfectly timed appearance in the royal lodge. It’s all just right, that measured ceremonial demeanor and the ease with which she carries her grandeur; like she’s been preparing for the part all her life.
An estimated one hundred actresses (and a single actor) have taken on the role of Elizabeth II. This includes some of the best British actresses, as well as Jeannette Charles (now 94), a British who owed her entire career to a striking resemblance to the Queen. She sometimes opened a shopping center here and there, but mainly appeared in a large number of (American) comedies in which the royal family was poked at. Note her appearance in movies like National Lampoon’s European Vacation and The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! She herself stated that she often had to say no to proposals she considered inappropriate; the queen in lingerie was unmentionable to her.
It has been the playwright and screenwriter Peter Morgan in particular who has revived worldwide interest in the British royal family as the perfect starting point from which to tell post-war British history, in cinema, the theater and, in recent years, through the gigantic stage that Netflix offers.
The Queen in 2006 Morgan earned an Oscar nomination, and protagonist Helen Mirren not only an Oscar, but also an invitation to visit Buckingham Palace. She had been there before, because in 2003 Mirren became a Lady. The Queen is about the low point in the relationship between Elizabeth and her subjects, surrounding the death of Princess Diana. Morgan and the beautiful Mirren portray Elizabeth as a woman trapped in her ceremonial role and unable to live with it, even as a wave of mourning sweeps over the land. Ultimately it is Tony Blair (played by Michael Sheen in the film) who tries to save the monarchy and cautiously and strategically tries to make clear to the Queen what is expected of her.
Troubled career
Mirren returned in 2013 as Elizabeth II in Morgan’s hit play The Audience which ran first in the West End (London) and later on Broadway (New York), and was re-staged in 2015 with another Lady in the lead role: Kristin Scott Thomas. In The Audience The monarch’s life is told through her meetings with her prime ministers, from Winston Churchill, who had a soft spot for the then very young Elizabeth. We now know that they would eventually become fifteen prime ministers, with a meeting with the new prime minister Liz Truss just before her death.
It was The Audience that the framework for Morgan’s successful series The Crown (from 2016), in which the endless deep pockets of Netflix allowed the reconstruction of historical eras and the entire turbulent career of Elizabeth and her family was given a dramatic interpretation. The fifth season of . is due in November The Crown start, while shooting for the sixth and final season (November 2023) was temporarily halted yesterday ‘out of respect’. With the last two seasons, Imelda Staunton is now the third actress to play Elisabeth.
oppressive loneliness
The role of the young Elizabeth proved a breakthrough for the acclaimed Claire Foy, as well as for Matt Smith (as Prince Philip) and Vanessa Kirby (as Elisabeth’s sister Princess Margaret). In the third season, the role was taken over by Olivia Colman, who excelled in an episode as aberfan (season 3, episode 3) about the mining disaster in Wales where a school is covered in mining waste. And just like in The Queen This is about Elizabeth’s inability to share her emotions with her subjects. Morgan, the screenwriter, sheds a single tear at the end of the episode, courtesy of the phenomenal Colman. But then Elizabeth is already back in the oppressive solitude of her royal apartments after her visit to the afflicted town.
It is also sometimes good to step away from the near monopoly that Peter Morgan has on the drama of the monarchy and the role of Elizabeth II, as he sees it. And that can suddenly give a completely different picture. In 2021, Chilean director Pablo Larraín . made Spencer, about a three-day Christmas weekend that Princess Diana (Kristen Stewart) spends with the royal family towards the end of her life. Larraín portrays the royal estate in Sandringham as a haunted house, and the entire film has a horror film-like perspective from Diana’s haunted perspective. Actress Stella Gonet plays a chilling Queen, a woman who goes over corpses to protect her family and the monarchy from what she sees as hostile outside world.
And then Imelda Staunton will become the first actress to play the part of Elizabeth II without the main character being there to take notice, invite her to lunch at the palace, or hand her a Damehood.