In bed with Her Majesty

Dave Calhoun talks to Stephen Frears and Peter Morgan, director and writer of 'The Queen'.

Aug 23 2006

There's a priceless, knowing scene in the middle of Stephen Frears' new film, 'The Queen'. It's September 1997, two days after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and amid the chaos at 10 Downing Street, a political aide turns to Michael Sheen's Tony Blair, and offers him the waiting phone receiver by barking, 'Tony – it's Gordon for you'. And Blair's lightning, dismissive response? 'Tell him to hang on.'

'That was a gag,' laughs Frears at a café a few doors down from his home in Notting Hill Gate. 'That was a cheap, below-the-belt gag, and a very good one too! Ha!'

I've raised the Gordon gag to counter Frears' assertion that he and screenwriter Peter Morgan – who previously worked together on the television film 'The Deal' – didn't intend to play 'The Queen' for laughs. To be fair, give or take a few easy jokes (such as a back-firing motorbike adding fuel to Prince Charles' apparent fear of being shot by a member of the public), Frears is right to defend himself. 'The Queen' is a million miles away from the satirical mimicry and cheap digs that have characterised recent televisual attempts to dramatise the domestic goings-on of the royal family, such as Channel 4's 'The Queen's Sister' (which detailed the bedroom antics of a young Princess Margaret) and ITV's 'Whatever Love Means' (which fed on the Diana-Charles-Camilla love triangle). Indeed, both royal-watchers and those allergic to the British tradition of television satire can put the ghosts of 'Spitting Image' to bed; Frears has taken the bold move of portraying the domestic habits of the royal family without succumbing to caricature (well, almost; James Cromwell's Prince Philip is somewhat broad).

'When I was editing the film, I would take out things if I thought they were just prejudice,' explains Frears of his desire to keep 'The Queen' sober and, crucially, believable. 'If you put in cheap, below-the belt jokes, people will say that it's unfair and then you'll lose your audience.'

'The Queen' takes place in the strange days after Diana's death and ventures behind the doors of both Downing Street and Balmoral. With the help of inserted news footage, it sketches the high-level debates that took place over how the royals should react. We see a shell-shocked Queen (a superb Helen Mirren) lying in bed, talking on the phone to Blair and watching television; in turn, we see an opportunistic Blair sparring with Alastair Campbell and trying unsuccessfully to soften the republican instincts of his wife, Cherie (Helen McCrory). Yes, the film is funny, but it's the key themes of that bizarre week – modernity versus tradition, and the various skewed, self-interested interpretations of that conflict – that most interest Frears and Morgan.

'Satire doesn't sound like a fruitful line,' Frears argues. 'I don't think you can make the royals as funny as they are in real life. They're both ridiculous and tragic at the same time – or ridiculous and serious at the same time. That's what I hope the film is.'

The film's screenwriter, Peter Morgan, is no stranger to writing historical drama. His play 'Frost/Nixon' is now on at the Donmar Warehouse and, apart from 'The Deal', which sketched the early days of the careers of Blair and Gordon Brown, he has written the script for 'The Last King of Scotland', Kevin Macdonald's film about Idi Amin, and is working on 'The Other Boleyn Girl'. Morgan's method is to riff on the facts with imagination and confidence. Of course, the big question is: how do you write such drama yet stay true to history? But Morgan, like Frears, is grumpy with those who persist in asking exactly what is or isn't real in 'The Queen'.

'It's not a docudrama or a drama of faction,' asserts Morgan. 'I've done my reading and gone away and written a script about individuals. If I was writing about Henry VIII or Elizabeth I, no one would be asking me this.'

One scene in 'The Queen' in particular stands as a bold statement of intent. As the pressure increases for Her Majesty to recognise the public mood and, among other things, return to Buckingham Palace and make a statement on television, she goes for a drive, alone, in her Land Rover. She stalls while crossing a shallow river and has a meditative – transformative, it's suggested – moment when an enormous stag passes her vehicle. It's a brazen moment on the part of Morgan.

'I have no idea if that took place,' laughs Frears, while Morgan confirms: 'I completely made it up.' Which is the point. The only witness to such an event would have been the Queen herself. Morgan is boldly asserting his right to invent.

Frears stresses that his two main aims were to remain true to the characters and to present a story that is 'believable'. But even Frears admits that 'yes, you could make propaganda films that way', which, of course, was not his intention. In the end, his version of events is fairly conservative; there are no moments of wild conjecture and no conspiracy theories culled from the Daily Express. His film is a measured collation of the facts; the artistry is in the sketching and realising of the characters and their relationships. For Frears, it's not about sticking to known events; it's about spinning them into something more interesting while, hopefully, remaining true to the essence of what actually happened.

'I don't think Richard III appeared on Bosworth Hill saying, "A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!"' argues Frears. 'That attitude completely fails to understand the role of the imagination.'

'The Queen' is out on September 15.

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