Interview - The King's Speech

Interview with Director Tom Hooper

By Sean Lynch

There is very little we don't know about the Royal Family in this day and age of trash mags and Internet blogs. Whether it's Prince Harry dressing as a Nazi or the wedded bliss of Prince William and Kate - we're on top of it all. But it wasn't always that way.

The King's Speech takes a look at the relatively unknown tale of Queen Elizabeth II's father and his remarkable friendship with eccentric speech therapist Lionel Logue.

As the second son of George V, Prince Albert was not expected to become King, but when his brother, David chose to abdicate in order to marry Wallis Simpson, Bertie succeeded him and in 1936 was crowned King George VI - thrust into the international spotlight with a severe speech impediment.

Web Wombat Movies' Sean Lynch caught up with 2011 Oscar and Golden Globe Winning Director Tom Hooper to talk about "The Kings Speech" and it's impact on the 2011 Academy Awards...

You've been up since 3am since the awards were announced - you could justifiably go on a traditional "Hollywood Drug Spree" just to stay awake...

[Laughs] This is where the spiral began!

You've won for awards before [John Adams, etc], how did you react this time around?

I was really thrilled. I think, personally, to be nominated as a director with those other guys was a real thrill.

I've been making films since I was twelve, so it was incredibly exciting.

Were you asleep when the Golden Globes nominations came through? Because you were in Australia at the time?

There was no way I could go to sleep. We knew that something might happen, and I was desperately trying to find coverage of it on TV and CNN played it, but when they started it they showed the TV nominations.

Then they said "We're going to take a break" and they never went back! [Laughs]

I was going crazy trying to find a live stream - and then my iPad wouldn't play the live stream - and eventually I just got some text messages which is now the least modern way to find out good news.

To the film itself - it's a relatively unknown story, which is odd considering he was such a public figure...

It literally was unknown. And until we discovered Lionel Logue's diaries, the amount we knew about Lionel Logue could be printed on a postage stamp.

I remember Geoffrey [Rush] saying : "I'm going to have to invent this guy". But we eventually tracked down his grandson - and because of those diaries we literally know a whole bunch of stuff we never knew before [a lot of which, including direct pieces of dialogue, ended up in the film].

The diaries were also our only way of knowing that the pictures of King George VI reading that speech on the 3rd of September 1939 were fake.

There was the famous photo in the Times of him being at a grand desk, in a naval uniform... it was all bullshit. He did it in a back room, decoracted cheerfully by Logue with an old school desk from the basement - with the window open - and Logue one on one in the room with him.

Between this and John Adams and even The Damned United, you've built a career on exposing the forgotten figures of history. Should we expect a Tom Hooper directed "The Kevin Rudd Story" any time soon?

[Laughs] You wonder where chasing the obscure angle could go - it could certainly end in dismal failure if you go too obscure...

Were any of the cast attached before you took on the project?

Geoffrey [Rush] was. In fact, Geoffrey attached himself. It's now a legendary story of the brown paper bag arriving on his Melbourne doorstep with the original play script - unsolicited - from this London Theatre Company.

Most actors would throw it in the bin, but he read it, and within days he rang his agent and said "I don't want to do it as a play, I want to do it as a movie".

How much archival audio is there of George's actual stutter - how did you ensure Colin Firth wasn't simply creating a caricature of a stuttering man?

Good question. The frustration is that we have nothing before Logue came into his life, so we can only guess as to how bad it was. 

There are some bits of archive audio where he is still struggling quite a lot - and that's once Logue had already come into his life!

The bit that was the most inspiring to Colin and I was from the 1938 Glasgow Empire Exhibition which we found on the Internet. There is a version that is less cut-up and plays a bit longer where you see in the closeup just how much he wants to do the right thing, that's all he wants to do, but he keeps on hitting these silences and drowns in them.

It brought tears to our eyes when we saw it - and I think Colin Firth has bottled the essence of The King's stammer in the most extraordinary way.

One final question before we go. We ask everyone this : If you could start your own "Richard Gere Gerbil" myth or rumour to spread about yourself in the press... what would it be?

Well, that's a nightmare junket question : What is something I would not like to be said about me, yet, I wouldn't mind [Laughs].

I remember when I was at Oxford I directed theatre, and I fired my leading man from A View From A Bridge and replaced him about three weeks before we opened because I thought he wasn't good enough. The student paper ran this big headline saying  "Disturbing View From Hooper's Bridge".

It was all about my ruthlessness - am I too ruthless - is the ruthlessness in the air needed in the context of a student production where it's meant to be everyone having fun.

So, with that, I was kind of appalled... but secretly pleased.

THE KING'S SPEECH is Out Now on DVD & Blu Ray