Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter and director Tom Hooper on The King's Speech

STARRING Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter, Tom Hooper's The King's Speech premiered at the London Film Festival last week.

The film tells the fascinating story of the relationship between King George VI (Firth), who suffered from a stammer, and the unconventional Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue (Rush).

While Bonham Carter plays the king's wife and future Queen Mother Elizabeth.

Not only does it feature arguably Colin Firth’s best performance yet, worthy of an Oscar nod, it is a truly magnificent film and a joy to watch from beginning to end.

When you’re dealing with what is a royal subject, did you have any extra concerns, especially when some of the people in the film are still alive?

Director Tom Hooper: I wanted to be hugely careful about the actresses of the film and I did a lot of research and history and facts do matter to me.

At the same time, it’s always a balancing act between verifiable historical truth and dramatic shape and that relationship is one we constantly discussed.

The great excitement of this film is the discovery nine weeks before the shoot that Lionel Logue’s grandson had all these papers in his aunt’s attic of a never before seen unpublished diary and even King George VI’s medical report card. To have this insight was really incredibly exciting.

Does the film have a message for people suffering from speech impediments?

TH: This film isn’t about the miracle cure. I had a screening recently in San Francisco and a very moved woman whose mother was disabled came up to me and was very grateful we hadn’t made a film about a miracle cure.

When Colin and I listened to King George VI making his final broadcast it was clear he was still a man suffering from a stammer. For most people with disabilities, it’s not about a cure, it’s about working with it.

Colin Firth: Good storytelling is never about providing answers for things. It’s about being honest about issues and problems and the way people seek to navigate them.

Colin, it was a wonderful performance from you. How important is to you to see the film rubber stamped by a flock of awards next year?

CF: I don’t know what’s going to happen next year. The fact people are talking that way is a sign of how positive people have responded to this, which is incredibly gratifying.

This wasn’t a walk in the park by any means. But that’s happened to me many, many times and you just have a load of rotten cabbages thrown at you.

Colin, how much research did you do into people with a stammer?

CF: A lot. I’ve done a lot in my life because it’s the third time I’ve played someone with a stammer.

What was interesting was that you don’t just pull out your stammer from the draw from your last performance.

It doesn’t work that way and that was an education for me because I thought perhaps I could.

It’s not the same for everybody. At different times in my life I’ve researched it as an issue and spoken to people who have experienced it, including our own writer David Seidler.

It wasn’t so much what was happening physiologically that was interesting to me, it was talking to David about what the fears are.

For example, if you go to a restaurant you don’t order the fish if you can’t say that. So your life is dictated by that fear. It doesn’t matter what else is at stake in what you have to do that day, it’s about whether you can say it.

And those things were very helpful as an insight into the terror this man felt when he couldn’t climb out of his silence.

If you look at the footage of this man making a speech, there’s a narrative to what he’s going to.

He hits a word, you realise that moment is coming and you see the dismay and see him going through that moment of containing himself.

When you watch that, you find out about him. To me, there’s something quite heroic there and there’s an entire epic going on.

Then you see him come back out of it and carry on with the same dignity and as if there’s nothing to do but go forward.

That actually revealed more to me about the character than anything and I found that out through the stammer.

Did your views of the British monarchy change at all during the course of making the film?

Helena Bonham Carter: No (laughs). I was unaware of the extent and how chronic George VI’s stammer was.

So what I think this film shows is a completely new angle on a very famous period in history – the abdication of Edward VIII.

It came very close to a proper crisis in the monarchy. So the pressure on this man and the personal crisis was totally new to me.

It’s also the story of the most reluctant king. It’s about the duty, responsibility and sheer hugeness of the job.

I certainly would never want to be royal, even though I effortlessly am at times (laughter). Which is partly why I did play it because I knew I could indulge in being a queen. I’ve played a few queens recently and they are really enjoyable. I just do queens.

She, the Queen Mother, was extraordinary because she was a professional public figure and expert at it. But she had the character and confidence.

She married a man who was not born to be king and wasn’t really constitutionally meant to be king, just in the way he was built. Luckily he drew upon her confidence where he lacked it.

It was a true partnership. She was the classic woman behind the man. Sadly, it wasn’t called The Queen’s Speech and was about the man behind the man.

Geoffrey, as a colonial from a country which has mixed feelings about the monarchy, does it warm you more to the monarchy or change your thoughts about the institution? You play the most unknown character in a sense but you are also the most key character in George VI’s life.

Geoffrey Rush: I’ve always had an intriguing, fascinating obsession with the whole dynasty of British royalty, going back millennia, because of the complexity of the history of the shaping of the various houses.

The house of Windsor, which is still with us, was for me the first sort of reality TV show.

I remember the first time they let the cameras into the palace, which must have been in the late 60s, early 70s, it was a sort of “At Home with the Windsors,” which was probably the beginning of demystifying them.

I just found that intriguing. I’d like my country to be a little bit more adult and independent, but I do find the presence of royalty and monarchy in contemporary life still intriguing.

It’s a wonderful witty script and there are some fantastic characters. How much of the film is true? How much did you have to fill in the blanks? And how did you go about doing that?

TH: I’m sure everyone knows the royal family’s ability to control the flow of information of the palace is formidable.

I think that reflects our ability to tell their stories even when it’s decades later.

The most valuable source for us was (Lionel’s) diaries. Lionel only started writing the diary when (Albert) became king. In other words, when the king was playing old Duke of York, I don’t think Lionel realised this was particularly noteworthy in terms of posterity. Which is interesting in terms of the sense of the Duke of York’s standing.

I think when he became king, the penny dropped.

So we have an account of that. But even in the diaries which have been published, he’s still incredibly careful not to talk too much about the detail which is happening.

For me, the things I got out of it were dialogues. At the end of the final speech in the film, when Lionel tells the king he still stammers on the W and the king says - “Well, I had to throw in a few so they knew it was me.” - that’s a direct quote from the diary.

That was last spoken out loud by Lionel Logue and King George VI. So in terms of where the content of the therapy comes from, really that comes out of David Seidler’s imagination.

If he has a strong claim on understanding therapy of that period, it’s because he was born in 1937, he had a terrible stammer as a child and he went through therapy initially in England, and also America, in the 40s and early 50s. So it was only 10 or 15 years after Lionel Logue was practising.

Things like the swearing technique (referring to a memorable scene in the film), I’m often asked whether that would happen.

We don’t know whether that would happen, but the interesting thing is that was a technique which was used with David in the 1940s and it was the breakthrough for him. It was an incredibly powerful and helpful thing.

So in terms of the therapy plot, I think the film is as much a personal exploration of the way David overcame stammering.

But the historical plot is obviously very well documented and the key shift is to compress the chronology of Bertie and Logue’s meeting in order to create the ticking clock of the abdication.

In fact, I did force David to re-write the script and it had a first act where the two guys met with absolutely no pressure that he would have to be anything other than the Duke of York.

I turned round to David and said - “Look, I just made your script worse, I’m very sorry.” - but I had to do it so a more historical chronology could work. So, it’s a mixture of imagination and fact.

As actors, how are you with public speaking?

HBC: I don’t like making speeches. This is not my idea of complete joy sitting up here, as much as you’re all lovely.

I’m the kind of introvert actor who likes putting on other people’s clothes and pretending to be somebody else, which is a completely crazy choice of profession.

But at times I have spasms of extrovert. I have every sympathy with anyone who does have to do it and doesn’t enjoy it.

GR: I’m a patron of the film festival in Melbourne and an ambassador for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

I’ve discovered now I prefer to prepare notes or write the speech so I can really hone it down, make it hopefully entertaining, try and get a laugh by the second line and then say what I need to say.

The only experience I’ve had was in the early 90s when I was working in the theatre and I went through a very bad period for about three or four years of dread-inducing panic attacks before going on stage.

Then I got an international film career and it sort of disappeared (laughter). I think that was the cure.

CF: What was it Seinfeld said?

GR: Oh yes. I heard this on the plane. He said: “Do you realise more people have a fear of public speaking than death.”

And he says at the funeral most people would want to be the person in the coffin than the person delivering the eulogy (laughter).

CF: I do have some experience. I got appalling stage fright last time I went on stage on opening night.

We’d had only two weeks rehearsal and hadn’t had a proper dress rehearsal. We were at the Donmar, there were no prompters and I had to open with a two page monologue.

I locked myself in the toilet before curtain-up. I wasn't planning to stay there. I thought, take a deep breath and say your first line but I couldn’t.

Then I thought, I need some air, but there isn’t any air backstage and no stage door.

Then I went through the fire door, which closed behind me five minutes before curtain-up.

So I had to go round the front through the audience - the very people I was terrified of.

I had to go through all of them with full body contact all the way, couldn’t remember the pass code to get back in and had to beg to be let back in.

Then I was told I had to go straight on stage. And I weirdly remembered the lines and got to end. It was like a car crash. So what I think does happen is, there is this mixture of a tension which can be debilitating and a tension which, God willing, you can convert into something functional.

Was there a moment, especially in the swearing scene, when you thought, what if this was the royal film premiere and what will the Queen make of it when she rents the DVD?

CF: It’s crossed my mind and it’s something we’ve touched on on several occasions. I don’t know. I think it really works in our story. I think they (Royal Family) might possibly doubt that that happened.

I think it is very unlikely we will get anyone to verify it as inaccurate and I just like it too much as a moment, in terms of a breakthrough, and it is quite a significant moment.

He goes from almost a complete relapse when he is confronting his brother to a release of actual rage, a full expression of panic, to this breakdown of this relationship.

So you can’t really get that arc without that piece. Had I had my script version of it, it would have been worse. There was a moment when producers kept running into the room saying: “No. You can say that and that, but not that if you want a release in certain countries.”

It wasn’t frivolous. We weren’t cocking a snook at anybody. We actually felt it had a genuine place as part of our story.

GR: Did you say poo, bum for the airline version? (laughs)

CF: We haven’t got there yet but I’m sure it will be delightful.

The second part of the question was what will the Queen think when she sees the DVD?

CF: I’m not convinced that one can have lived a long time in the royal family without ever having heard those words.

I can’t possibly comment on what Her Majesty might think, but I don’t think there’s anybody alive who's ignorant of those words.

I particularly enjoyed the performance of the children and it is a shame they won’t be able to see the film in cinemas, officially that is.

Could you comment on the decision by the BBFC to classify the film as a 15, especially when more violent things do get lower certificates.

TH: My head is in my hands about it.

I go to see Salt where a tube is force fed down Angelina Jolie’s throat and water poured down to simulate drowning. That’s not a problem.

The Daniel Craig scene in the Bond film where his bollocks are smashed in through a chair with no bottom. Another torture scene, but that’s not a problem and doesn’t get a 15.

This extraordinary division we make between language and violence and sex and violence, I find hugely disturbing.

I mean, these are scenes which are still in my head from those two films, which I don’t want in my head. They’re troubling me and I’m my age.

And the context of the swear words in The King's Speech is A, this was done in the 1940s, we’re now 2010, B, it’s therapeutic and C, it’s not being done to describe anyone or being used in its sexual meaning. So I’m just sort of bemused by it.

CF: It would be very interesting to do a study as to who these people are that would complain about that stuff before they would complain about violence.

(The BBFC has since reclassified The King's Speech as a 12A).

Helena, when you’re playing a real character like this, do you delve into the research or do you just go by the script. Also, do you just try these people on at home and see how they’re going to play?

HBC: Yeah, otherwise it wouldn’t be any fun. No, certainly when you’re playing a real person you’ve got a real responsibility.

I read some biographies, but I didn’t actually have that long. I think I had about two and half weeks and I think I was playing a witch in Harry Potter at the same time.

CF: We got quite a lot of the Harry Potter witch, didn’t we? (laughs)

HBC: Actually, my son, who was six at the time, said: “Mum, are you going to be the witch or the queen tomorrow?”

Having said that, the wirch Bellatrix is quite exhausting because she’s a bit of a holligan, so it was quite nice to have the weekends off as the Queen, which was a bit more restrained.

Anyway, you do all the reading but ultimately you have to serve the story. So I took what was relevant and I watched a bit. You just try and capture some kind of essence.

Colin, what did you know of George VI before you took the role and do you think he’s underrated? And Helena, did you meet the Queen Mother while she was alive and did that help inform the role?

CF: I didn’t know very much. I knew almost nothing at all.

My parents were children during his reign and I remember my mother talking about his reluctance to take the throne and what a crisis that would have been for him personally. There was some admiration for him for that.

I remember her telling me about the stammer and her expressing something about the relationship between Elizabeth and him. She understood it as being a close and loving one. Those are vestiges of my childhood memory and that would be about it. I knew nothing else at all.

HBC: I did meet the Queen Mother. I met her because she came to the premiere of A Room With A View when I was very young. All those centuries ago.

I got what most people perceived. She had this great grace and she was great at being gracious. She always had that sort of cloud of charming vagueness but I think underneath it she had a huge amount of inner strength. Cecil Beaton says that she was a marshmallow but made by a welding machine. He was a great friend. And I thought if I can try and get that duality...

The King's Speech (12A) is out on January 7.