Queen Elizabeth II died this week at the age of 96. Many may remember the queen to be an official head of state , others recall a slightly less formal side of the monarch. The general public may best remember her for some of her recent forays into pop culture, such as her appearance with Daniel Craig at the 2012 Olympics, and it turns out she came on her own in this appearance.
Frank Cottrell-Boyce He wrote the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Olympics, which included an appearance of the queen herself alongside Daniel Craig as James Bond. He told BBC Breakfast (via THR ) that originally the plan would have been to use a substitute to play the queen, so they sent someone to photograph the clothes she would wear to the ceremony. At this point the Loggia della Regina intervened, probably on instruction, to let the Queen participate in the show. Cottrell-Boyce explained …
The queen’s box said, ‘Why are you doing all this?’ And we said, “To make her look like the queen.” She then she said, “Oh, the queen wants to do this.” She volunteered for it, she wanted to be in the sketch.
All right. Sure, the production probably didn’t even consider asking Queen Elizabeth II if she would be in the skit, why the hell would she want to be in a stupid James Bond skit at the Olympics? But it turns out that he just wasn’t up to it, he wanted it, and when you’re the boss, you tend to get what you want. Queen Elizabeth clearly had a playful side . Check out the look below.
But the story still gets better. Probably because they didn’t originally plan on using the real queen, it appears she had no lines in the original script. Well, even that didn’t go well with the monarch, so on the day of the shoot he “suggested” to director Danny Boyle give him something to say. Cottrell-Boyce continues …
The day we were shooting, he told Danny Boyle, “I think I should have a line.“ He bagged it. He didn’t have any lines in the script.
Frank Cottrell-Boyce has already taken part in Queen’s performance as well Paddington Bear for his recent jubilee , and praised his performance, where he had many more lines. As with any other actor playing a CGI character, he wasn’t acting against anything, but Cottrell-Boyce said it was a “brilliantly planned comedy performance”.
So this was a side of Queen Elizabeth II that probably won’t be talked about as much in the next few days, but it goes a long way in showing us who she was as a person. She was able to act with James Bond outside of theaters and also in Paddington, which many actors have never had the opportunity to do, and she did it brilliantly.
Source: Cinemablend
