47 Fun Facts About The King's Speech

Who directed The King's Speech?

Tom Hooper threw out the script's original 'Hollywood ending', a faultless final speech, because the real 1939 broadcast shows a king still managing his stammer rather than cured of it.

Who plays King George VI?

Colin Firth found the stammer hard to shake: months after the film opened he admitted it still crept into his own speech, and got worse the more he thought about it.

Who plays Lionel Logue?

Geoffrey Rush got the script in a brown envelope pushed through his front door; his manager sent the producers a four-page email scolding them, then added that Rush liked it.

What nationality was the real Lionel Logue?

Australian: Adelaide-born Logue taught elocution and acting in Perth before moving to London; in the film the King's advisers distrust him precisely because he holds no formal qualifications.

Who plays Queen Elizabeth, Bertie's wife?

Helena Bonham Carter was shooting Harry Potter on weekdays, so all her scenes were filmed at weekends; a producer said it felt like being 'the divorced parent who could only have her at weekends'.

Where is the opening scene of The King's Speech set?

The Empire Exhibition at Wembley, in 1925: to fill the terraces the crew sat inflatable dummies in period costume among some 250 extras, then added more people digitally.

What does Logue have Bertie recite while listening to music on headphones?

Hamlet's 'To be, or not to be': with music blaring in his ears Bertie cannot hear himself and reads it fluently, as he learns only when he angrily plays the recording at home.

What does George V tell Bertie will play a significant part in the royal family's future?

The wireless: after his Christmas broadcast the old King grumbles that it has turned royalty into 'actors' who must enter people's homes, then makes Bertie try the microphone himself.

Who plays the ailing King George V?

Michael Gambon plays the old King as a tough martinet; historian Andrew Roberts judged that the film's George V comes off harsher than the real man, a price paid for drama.

What does Bertie accuse Logue of when Logue suggests he could be a good king?

Treason: stung by the hint that he could supplant his brother, Bertie storms off and ends the sessions, and comes back to Logue only once the abdication has made him King.

Who plays David, the Prince of Wales who becomes Edward VIII?

Guy Pearce plays the elder brother although he is seven years younger than the actor playing Bertie; the real brothers were friends, historian Andrew Roberts noted, not the sneering rivals shown.

Why can't Edward VIII marry Wallis Simpson even after her divorce?

Both her former husbands are still alive, and the Church of England, which the King heads, then refused to remarry anyone divorced while an ex-spouse was living.

Which actor plays the Archbishop of Canterbury in The King's Speech?

Derek Jacobi's Archbishop Lang has Logue investigated and tells the new King that his therapist has no formal training at all, which sets up their furious row in the Abbey.

In The King's Speech, how does Logue say he first came to treat speech defects?

Helping shell-shocked Great War soldiers: he tells an outraged Bertie that no formal qualifications existed when he began, and the real Logue did treat returned servicemen who had lost their speech.

What provokes Bertie into speaking fluently in the Abbey?

Logue sitting in King Edward's Chair, the ancient coronation throne, goads Bertie into shouting that he has a voice, and he realises he has just raged without a stammer.

Which honour does the closing title card say Logue received?

Commander of the Royal Victorian Order: the order rewards personal service to the monarch, and George VI made Logue a Member on the eve of his coronation, then promoted him in 1944.

Who wrote the screenplay for The King's Speech?

David Seidler developed a stammer as a small child during the war and took heart from hearing George VI, a fellow stammerer, rally listeners over the radio.

Who asked the writer of The King's Speech to hold the story back for as long as she lived?

The Queen Mother, George VI's widow, sent word through her private secretary that he should wait, so he shelved the idea in 1982 and returned to it only after her death twenty years later.

Who phoned the director of The King's Speech after a fringe play reading to say 'I've found your next project'?

His mother had been taken by friends to a reading of the unproduced play at a tiny north London theatre, the first play reading she had ever attended, and rang him straight afterwards.

Through which relative did Logue's diaries reach The King's Speech's makers weeks before filming?

His grandson Mark Logue was turning the diaries into a book, and the makers reworked the script to fit them, adding lines that the King and his therapist had really exchanged.

Which actor did the director of The King's Speech originally want for George VI?

Hugh Grant turned the part down, as did the writer's own first pick, Paul Bettany, so the actor who made the role famous was only the third choice.

Which cathedral stood in for Westminster Abbey in The King's Speech?

Ely was picked over Lincoln, the closer architectural match, because its sheer scale let the crew build not only the coronation but the days of preparation before it.

Lancaster House, hired at £20,000 a day, played the interiors of which royal home in The King's Speech?

Buckingham Palace may be the plainer of the two: Queen Victoria is said to have told Lancaster House's owner, 'I have come from my house to your palace.'

Which London power station doubled as a BBC radio control room in The King's Speech?

Battersea is a Thirties building, so its disused control room, with acres of period dials, could pass for the BBC room that sends the King's speech around the world.

Why was The King's Speech shot on unusually wide lenses?

To convey the King's feelings of constriction: lenses as wide as 14mm, held close to the actors, subtly bend the picture, an effect one critic mistook for a fisheye lens.

Which piece of music plays under the King's climactic 1939 broadcast in The King's Speech?

Beethoven's 7th Symphony, second movement, was only the editor's temporary track, but the film's composer refused to replace it, saying he could never compete with it.

Who composed the score for The King's Speech?

Alexandre Desplat recorded it through vintage microphones once made to order for the royal family and dug out of the EMI archives, to give the music a dated sound.

The swearing in The King's Speech earned it which US rating, matching that year's Saw 3D?

R, which bars under-17s unless an adult comes too: the US board judged a stammering king's therapy-room curses as severely as a horror film's gore, to the director's open dismay.

What certificate did British censors first give The King's Speech, before an appeal brought it down?

15, for strong language: the distributors appealed, and the board relented because the swearing was aimed at nobody and came, as its advice put it, 'in a speech therapy context'.

Which Hollywood mogul considered re-editing The King's Speech to cut its swearing for a lower rating?

Harvey Weinstein, its American distributor, wanted a tamer version that families could see; the director answered that he would not support cutting the film in any way.

The King's Speech won which of these Oscars?

Original Screenplay: its writer told the audience his father had always called him a late bloomer, then thanked the Queen 'for not putting me in the Tower of London' over the swearing.

Who co-hosted the 2011 Oscars at which The King's Speech won Best Picture?

James Franco and Anne Hathaway were hired because the producers wanted younger faces after a pair of hosts whose ages added up to 116; Franco was also a nominee that night, for 127 Hours.

Which film matched The King's Speech's four wins at the 2011 Oscars?

Inception took four craft Oscars, for cinematography, visual effects and both sound awards, even though Christopher Nolan had not been nominated as its director.

Which festival gave The King's Speech its world premiere?

Telluride, in Colorado, saw it first; four days later it played Toronto, where it drew a standing ovation and went on to win the audience-voted People's Choice Award.

Bertie was the family's name for the future King George VI, but what was his actual first name?

Albert: he chose to reign as George VI to signal continuity with his father after the abdication, and the film has his own first name ruled out as 'too Germanic'.

On which London street did the real Lionel Logue keep his consulting rooms?

Harley Street is the home of London's private doctors, and Logue made its prices work for the poor: the fees of his wealthy patients there let him treat others for nothing.

Which writer attacked The King's Speech in Slate for whitewashing Churchill's role in the abdication?

Christopher Hitchens pointed out that Churchill had in fact stood by Edward VIII for as long as he dared, the opposite of the loyal friend to Bertie seen in the film.

In The King's Speech, Bertie watches a newsreel of which leader and admits he cannot follow the words?

Adolf Hitler: one critic found the moment hard to credit, since the real King's parents were both of German descent and his elder brother spoke the language fluently.

In The King's Speech, which title role does Logue audition for, only to be turned down?

Richard III: the play's director praises Logue's diction but cannot hear 'a deformed creature yearning to be king', and turns him down just before a real prince becomes his patient.

What did The King's Speech's designer find in part of a room and copy across Logue's whole office?

Peeling wallpaper: one wall's oil-soaked paper had been half scraped and half burned off, and designer Eve Stewart liked the mottled effect so much that she reproduced it across the room.

Which star of the BBC's 1995 Pride and Prejudice plays Lionel Logue's wife Myrtle in The King's Speech?

Jennifer Ehle's Myrtle has no idea who her husband's patient is until she comes home to find the new King and Queen in her own house.

In The King's Speech, what do Bertie's physicians say will relax his throat and ease his stammer?

Smoking cigarettes: Logue calls the doctors idiots and bans it in his rooms, and the real King, a heavy smoker, had a lung removed in 1951 and died the following year at 56.

Which body put £1 million of lottery money into The King's Speech?

UK Film Council money came back many times over: the body learned in July 2010 that it was to be scrapped, and seven months later its £1 million bet won Best Picture.

Which relative of The King's Speech's star, a professional voice coach, helped him build the King's stammer?

His sister Kate, who coaches actors' voices, gave him insight into people who struggle to be understood and devised the odd-looking exercises that Logue puts Bertie through on screen.

At the 2011 BAFTAs, the director of The King's Speech lost the directing prize to whom?

David Fincher won for The Social Network, a result that flipped two weeks later at the Oscars, where The King's Speech took the directing award as well as Best Picture.

From seven Golden Globe nominations, The King's Speech won only which award?

Best Actor – Drama was its lone Globe from the most nominations of any film; The Social Network won best drama that night, a result the Oscars reversed six weeks later.

Which Spanish honour did The King's Speech win in 2011?

The Goya for Best European Film went to it in Madrid on 13 February 2011, the same evening it was collecting seven BAFTAs in London, so its makers won in two capitals at once.