Trivia
The BBFC originally gave the film a 15 certificate, for 17 occurrences of the word "fuck." On appeal, it was reduced to 12A, with the information "contains strong language in a speech therapy context". This extended the controversy started a few weeks earlier when Made in Dagenham was given a 15 certificate solely for 19 occurrences of the word "fuck" in casual speech.
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Michael Gambon had previously portrayed King Edward VII (father of his King George V) in the British miniseries, The Lost Prince.
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Derek Jacobi previously portrayed a ruler who struggled with speech problems in the BBC TV miniseries I, Claudius. Jacobi also played Alan Turing on the West End, Broadway, and a television movie. Turing also had a stammer, and was an important figure in the Allied victory in World War II. Jacobi also starred in Dead Again, in which he played a character that had a stammer as a child.
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King George's first successful attempt at speaking is reciting Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech. Many members of the cast have appeared in productions of Hamlet. Derek Jacobi played the title role in Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, opposite Claire Bloom as Gertrude. In addition he played the Prince in over 400 performances on stage. Jacobi went on to play Claudius in Hamlet, in which Timothy Spall played Rosencrantz. This production also featured Rosemary Harris, mother of cast member Jennifer Ehle. Geoffrey Rush played Horatio in the Australian theater. Helena Bonham Carter played Ophelia in Hamlet.
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While preparing the film, the production knew that having some key cast would help the movie get made. They convinced someone who lived near actor Geoffrey Rush to put the script in his letterbox, against industry practice. It included a note apologizing for the unsolicited delivery, and explained that they were desperate for him to know the script existed. Rush read the script and agreed to do the film.
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Production had to be scheduled around Helena Bonham Carter's schedule; she was also filming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.
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David Seidler stammered as a child, and heard George VI's wartime speech as a child. As an adult, he wrote the Queen Mother and asked for permission to use the King's story to create a film. The Queen Mother asked him not to during her lifetime, saying the memories were too painful. Seidler respected her request.
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Throughout the film, Lionel refuses to let Bertie smoke during their speech sessions, saying "sucking smoke into your lungs will kill you." Several years later, King George VI (Bertie) died from complications related to lung cancer on February 6, 1952 at age 56.
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The role of King George VI was written with Paul Bettany in mind. Bettany declined to spend more time with his family, and later admitted that he regretted his decision. Colin Firth was cast instead and received an Oscar for his performance.
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The Kings of Great Britain are successively portrayed by an Irishman (Michael Gambon plays King George V), an Australian (Guy Pearce plays King Edward VIII) and an Englishman (Colin Firth plays King George VI).
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An Australian (Guy Pearce) plays a Brit, a Briton (Eve Best) plays an American, and an American (Jennifer Ehle) plays an Australian.
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Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth also starred in Shakespeare in Love, in which Mark Williams played an actor with a horrible stammer.
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Jennifer Ehle played Elizabeth Bennett to Colin Firth's Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. At the time, the two were briefly in a relationship. David Bamber, who played Collins in Pride and Prejudice, also appears here in a very small role, sharing no scenes with either Firth or Ehle.
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While talking about William Shakespeare, one of Logue's sons mentions 'the Scottish play'. That play is 'Macbeth'; according to a widely held superstition, this particular play is cursed, and it brings bad luck to say the title 'Macbeth' aloud.
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The fascination of Geoffrey Rush's character with Shakespeare is noteworthy, as Rush himself played Shakespeare's friend in Shakespeare in Love. Colin Firth also appeared in that movie, as Shakespeare's rival.
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The film is an Australian co-production, and the first ever Australian film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
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Britain's four latest monarchs -- King George V (1910-1936), King Edward VIII (1936-1936), King George VI (1936-1952), and Queen Elizabeth II (1952-present) -- are all depicted.
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Scriptwriter David Seidler has said of King George VI: "Here was a stutterer who was a king and had to give radio speeches where everyone was listening to every syllable he uttered, and yet did so with passion and intensity."
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Speech therapist Lionel Logue's diary was discovered just nine weeks prior to principal photography. Quotations from original clinical notes in them were worked into the film's screenplay.
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The historical subject matter, including the major theme of King George VI's stammering, has been dealt with before, in the 2002 made-for-TV movie Bertie and Elizabeth.
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The piece of music heard during the film's finale broadcast of King George VI's 1939 radio speech is the second movement Allegretto of Ludwig van Beethoven's 7th Symphony. It is often used in films to score a scene of carnage and sadness.
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With Colin Firth winning the Academy Award Best Actor Oscar for playing King George VI in this film, Best Acting Oscars have now gone to actors playing both Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren in The Queen) and her father, and awarded just four years apart.
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Australian actor Guy Pearce has the distinction of appearing in back-to-back consecutive Academy Award Best Picture winners: this film and the previous year's Best Picture winner, The Hurt Locker. Max Glickman also worked on both pictures in the camera department.
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At age 73, David Seidler became the oldest person to ever win the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award (Oscar) for this film.
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Colin Firth won the Best Actor Academy Award (Oscar) for this movie on his second nomination. Firth was a consecutive back-to-back nominee as he had been nominated the year before in the same category for A Single Man, losing to Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart. Bridges was also nominated in this same category the year Firth won, for True Grit.
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Though having had a large body of television work, director Tom Hooper won the Best Director Academy Award (Oscar) for this movie on his first ever nomination, the film being just Hooper's third ever film. The earlier two features Hooper had directed were Red Dust and The Damned United.
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Helena Bonham Carter has the distinction of appearing in two of the 2011 Academy Award winning movies, this film (winning 4 Oscars) and Alice in Wonderland (winning 2 Oscars). In both movies, Bonham-Carter plays a queen, Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mum of Queen Elizabeth II) in this film and The Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland. Ironically, Bonham Carter's the Red Queen image was inspired by Bette Davis's Queen Elizabeth I character in The Virgin Queen i.e. another Queen Elizabeth of England.
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Third Academy Award Best Picture Oscar winner to feature the word 'King' in the title. The first two winners were All the King's Men and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
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The MPAA gave the film an R rating, due entirely to the scenes where Bertie curses as part of his speech therapy or preparation for the climactic address. Bob Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein appealed, but were denied. They later submitted a cut without some of the profanity, and got a PG-13 rating. However, the R-rated version is considered the Oscar-winning one, extending a string of R-rated Best Pictures from 2005 to 2010.
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Anthony Andrews previously played Edward VIII in another film about the abdication crisis, The Woman He Loved.
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The King's speech, as delivered in the movie, is only two-thirds of the original. The original speech has 407 words; the movie version has 269. Four sentences were deleted and four sentences were shortened.
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Lionel Logue is an actor turned speech therapist. To help develop his character's stammer, and the exercises used to overcome it, Colin Firth also turned to his sister Katie Firth, another actor turned speech therapist.
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Alexandre Desplat composed the music for this film and The Queen, which is about George VI's daughter, Elizabeth II. Desplat received Oscar nominations for both films.
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Helena Bonham Carter, as Duchess of York and Queen, is seen talking to Winston Churchill (Timothy Spall). Her grandmother, Violet Bonham Carter, was a good friend of Churchill's, and her great-grandfather was Prime Minister H.H. Asquith.
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The second Best Picture winner in less than a decade to feature "King" in the title. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won Best Picture seven years earlier. Lionel Logue's oldest son Laurie is played by Calum Gittins, whose mother Philippa Boyens co-wrote all three Lord of the Rings films, and appeared himself in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
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This film features two Death-eaters, Helena Bonham Carter and Timothy Spall, and a Hogwarts headmaster, Michael Gambon, from the Harry Potter films.
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After the abdication, both the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were genuinely surprised and dismayed that they were to be banned from the United Kingdom, never to return. It's generally believed that was primarily due to the demands of Elizabeth, the queen mother, who absolutely detested the former Wallis Warfield Simpson. Elizabeth held Wallis personally responsible and accountable for initially throwing "Bertie" into a job he wasn't prepared to handle and, later, contributed to his early death due to the stress and responsibility of being king. Queen Mary, Edward's mother, never reconciled with her son and refused to attend his marriage to Wallis in France. Edward was allowed to return to England to attend the funerals of his mother and his brother, Bertie. Both he and Wallis were allowed to be buried on a Royal Estate by special permission of Queen Elizabeth II.
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EMI recording engineer Peter Cobbin pointed out that the original royal microphones, which were used for speeches such as those depicted in the film, had been held in the EMI archives for over 70 years. The EMI Archive Trust granted permission for five of these to be loaned to Abbey Road Studios, of which three were able to be restored to good working condition and used for recording the film's orchestral score. The microphones, designed for HM George V, HM George VI, HM Queen Mary, and HM Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother), were state-of-the-art in the 1930s (and excellent even compared to much of today's equipment), gilt with silver and chrome details bearing royal coats of arms and other individual insignia. Composer Alexandre Desplat and director Tom Hooper were both pleased with the result, and felt that the slight coloring of the sound caused by the older equipment gave the recordings an authentic "patina" of the time period.
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Winston Churchill was seen with a large cigar so frequently that a specific cigar size ("vitola") was named in his honor. Churchill-sized cigars are 7 inches in length and 48/64 inches in diameter.
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When Her Royal Highness Princess Elizabeth meets Lionel Logue the first time, she says, "She warned me that your antipodean methods were both unorthodox and controversial." The word "antipodean" has roughly two meanings: the diametrically opposite side of the earth (meaning Australia and New Zealand); or the exact opposite. Since Logue was an Australian, and also since he is portrayed as a rogue character who goes against conventional wisdom in his treatment, this line has a double meaning. There are numerous other references to Logue's Australian nationality, which may relate to the director's wishes, since he felt that the English have an aversion to therapy.
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At one point in the film, King Edward VIII makes fun of Prince Albert's stammer by saying: "Younger brother trying to push older brother off the throne. P-p-p-p-p-positively medieval!" Minus the stammer, this was an actual line written by the real King Edward to his brother when he was away from Great Britain for a time, having given a few responsibilities to Prince Albert in his absence.
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