The Queen director Stephen Frears on Elizabeth II's death: "I wouldn't want to have been the Queen"
If Queen Elizabeth II's life seems vivid to us through movies and television, that's largely due to filmmaker Stephen Frears, who directed 2006's Oscar-winning The Queen, starring Helen Mirren.
Sitting down in EW's video suite at the Toronto International Film Festival to discuss his latest film The Lost King, Frears commented on the monarch's death and the impact his movie had on her public image.
"Everybody on that film, they thought the Queen was like their mum, so it was quite straightforward," Frears said, adding that his views of her are separate from his own anti-monarchy sentiments. "The institution is one thing, but she is, herself, extraordinary, as you can see from the reaction to her death."
Steve Coogan, co-screenwriter and a supporting actor in The Lost King, also classified himself as a "republican" — someone who favors sovereignty of the people, not a royal — yet, like Frears, echoed his deference for Elizabeth II. "The Queen uniquely commanded respect across the board, whatever the color of your political views," Coogan added. "She put the hours in, her entire life, and did have a sense of duty, and all those things people are saying are absolutely true. It is a separate thing."
Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty; Rodin Eckenroth/Getty
"Stephen looks at people as human beings whoever they are, wherever they are," Coogan said. "Which is what a good dramatist should do — humanize people."
Though many credit Frears and The Queen with reforming the public image of the queen in the years following Princess Diana's death, the director said he never envied her and her position. "I wouldn't want to have been the Queen," he reflected. "It must've been a ghastly life."
Frears' The Queen won Helen Mirren an Academy Award for her portrayal, launching an association with Elizabeth II that continued with screenwriter Peter Morgan's play The Audience.
The director, however, says he hasn't had a chance to catch up with Mirren in the days since Queen Elizabeth II's death. "I am proud to be an Elizabethan," Mirren wrote on Instagram shortly after Buckingham Palace announced the Queen's death. "We mourn a woman who, with or without the crown, was the epitome of nobility."
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