Trivia

Nine weeks before filming began, Lionel Logue's grandson, Mark Logue, discovered a large box in his attic that contained his grandfather's personal papers. The box held Lionel Logue's diary, his appointment book, notes from his speech therapy sessions with King George VI, and over 100 personal letters to Logue from the King. It also contained what is believed to be the actual copy of the speech used by George VI in his 1939 radio broadcast announcing the declaration of war with Germany. Mark Logue turned his grandfather's papers, letters, and diary over to director Tom Hooper and screenwriter David Seidler, who used them to flesh out the relationship between Logue and the King. Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth also read through the material for insight into their characters. The exchange in this movie between Logue and King George VI following his radio speech ("You still stammered on the 'W'." / "Well, I had to throw in a few so they knew it was me.") was taken directly from Logue's diary. Firth insisted that it should be included in the movie.

At 73, David Seidler became the oldest person to win the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award (Oscar) for this movie.

At one point, 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, that was an actual line written by King Edward (later Duke of Windsor) to his brother (later King George VI) when he was away from Great Britain for a time and gave Prince Albert a few responsibilities in his absence.

The King's speech, as delivered in the movie, is only two-thirds of the original. The original speech has 407 words, the movie 269. Four sentences were deleted, four sentences were shortened.

While arguing about the coronation chair, the King mentions the Stone of Scone (pronounced "skoon"), also called the Stone of Destiny, underneath the chair. Scottish and British monarchs have been crowned over the stone for centuries, although it has probably not been really the same stone all this time, as a few "switcheroos" are believed to have taken place over the centuries. It was still in Westminster Abbey at the time shown, but was returned to Scotland in 1996 to appease anti-English feeling that the stone was rightfully Scotland's. It will temporarily return to Westminster Abbey for future coronations.

This movie was an Australian co-production, and the first Australian movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Colin Firth won the best actor Oscar for his performance as King George VI in this movie. The next year, he presented the Best Actress prize to Meryl Streep for her performance as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady (2011). Streep then subsequently presented Best Actor to Daniel Day-Lewis for portraying Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln (2012). So in a span of three years, lead acting Oscars were presented to the King of Great Britain to the British Prime Minister and then to the President of the United States.

According to EMI recording engineer Peter Cobbin, the original royal microphones had been in the EMI archives for over 70 years. The EMI Archive Trust granted permission for five of them to be loaned to Abbey Road Studios. Three were restored to good working condition and used for recording this movie's orchestral score. The microphones, designed for King George V, King George VI, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, were adorned with silver and chrome details bearing royal coats of arms and other individual insignia. They were state-of-the-art in the 1930s, and excellent even compared to much modern equipment. Composer Alexandre Desplat and director Tom Hooper were 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.

After the film had been completed Colin Firth struggled to lose the stutter he had developed for the film and required speech assistance, just like King George VI.

Guy Pearce plays the older brother of Colin Firth's character. Pearce is seven years younger than Firth.

Ironically, despite playing the role of King George VI, Colin Firth is actually a British republican advocating the abolition of the monarchy, yet still accepted a CBE.

Keen eyes will notice the Blackshirt advertisement posters in the movie; "Fascism is Practical Patriotism " and "Stand by the King". The Blackshirt was the British Union of Fascists newspaper. Founded by Sir Oswald Mosley, the BUF's popularity began to dwindle in 1940. Mosley was against the UK forming a military pact with Poland that it had no way on enforcing, and which ensured the Soviet Union invaded Poland in 1939. The Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin knew Britain and France would only declare war on Germany.

Alexandre Desplat composed the music for this movie and The Queen (2006), which is about George VI's daughter, Elizabeth II. Desplat received Oscar nominations for both movies.

When told to waltz in preparation for his final speech, the King sings part of his speech to the melody of the "Garland Waltz" from Het wrak van de Noorzee (1915)'s "Sleeping Beauty" ballet. The tune is familiar to many listeners as "Once Upon A Dream" from Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty (1959), which adapted some of Tchaikovsky's ballet for its musical numbers and score.

The real Winston Churchill was seen with a large cigar so frequently that a specific cigar size was named in his honor. Churchill-sized cigars are seven inches long and 50/64-inch in diameter (or 50 ring gauge).

With Colin Firth winning the Academy Award Best Actor Oscar for playing King George VI in this movie, Best Acting Oscars have now gone to an actress and an actor playing Queen Elizabeth II (Dame Helen Mirren in The Queen (2006)) and her father.

When Archbishop Cosmo Lang attempts to dismiss Lionel Logue as the King's speech therapist, he says that he found a "replacement English specialist with impeccable credentials." He overly stresses the word "English" in an apparent display of English elitism and as a snub to Logue's Australian background, but Archbishop Lang was Scottish.

Though having had a large body of television work, Tom Hooper won the Best Director Academy Award for this movie on his first nomination, this movie being just Hooper's third movie. The first two being Red Dust (2004) and The Damned United (2009).

The casting of Colin Firth was criticized by some because he did not look or sound like the real King George VI, and was also nearly a decade older than the character.

The film was criticized for underplaying Edward VIII's flirtation with Nazism both before and after the outbreak of hostilities in September 1939 and for neglecting to mention George VI's support for the policy of appeasement. However the most serious historical mistakes were the depiction of Baldwin stepping down due to his inability to handle Hitler, and the misrepresentation of Churchill as an opponent of Edward VIII. In reality Baldwin was persuaded to retire by Chamberlain, and Churchill was Edward's strongest and most vocal supporter.

Geoffrey Rush's and Colin Firth's characters discuss William Shakespeare. Rush and Firth played some of Shakespeare's acquaintances in Shakespeare in Love (1998), with Rush playing a friend and benefactor, and Firth playing their antagonist.

This movie featured Harry Potter actress and actors Helena Bonham Carter, Timothy Spall, and Michael Gambon.

Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die," edited by Steven Schneider.

An exchange between Winston Churchill and Bertie suggests that Churchill supported Edward's abdication and Bertie becoming king. In truth, Churchill supported Edward and his attempts to marry Wallis Simpson and remain King. Churchill suffered politically for his position. He wrote that the abdication was "premature and probably quite unnecessary".

Timothy Spall also played Winston Churchill at the opening of the 2012 London Olympics.

Anthony Andrews, who portrayed Stanley Baldwin in this movie, played Edward VIII in another movie about the Duke of Windsor abdication crisis, The Woman He Loved (1988).

Derek Jacobi portrayed a monarch who struggled with speech problems in I, Claudius (1976). Jacobi played another stutterer, Alan Turing (an Allied genius in World War II), in Breaking the Code (1996). Jacobi also starred in Dead Again (1991), in which a character's stammer plays a role in the plot.

Robert Hardy, who had previously played Winston Churchill several times on-screen to considerable acclaim, described Timothy Spall's performance in an interview in the Telegraph as "absolutely awful". According to the journalist Harry Wallop, many critics agreed.

This movie marks the second time that an actor and an actress have received Academy Awards for playing a royal father and daughter in two separate movies. Previously, Charles Laughton won an Oscar for The Private Life of Henry VIII. (1933), while Judi Dench won the Oscar for playing his daughter Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love (1998). Fittingly, the role of Elizabeth I has also been played by Helen Mirren, and Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush appeared in Shakespeare in Love (1998).

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 (2003) 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 movies, and appeared in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002).

In this movie, Colin Firth plays King George VI. Earlier, his brother Jonathan Firth played George VI's great-grandfather Prince Albert in Victoria & Albert (2001).

King George VI broke with protocol by publicly endorsing the Munich Agreement in 1938, and by inviting Neville Chamberlain to appear on the balcony at Buckingham Palace. Chamberlain's "appeasement" policy towards Hitler was the subject of some opposition in the House of Commons, which led historian John Grigg to describe the King's behavior in associating himself so prominently with a politician as "the most unconstitutional act by a British sovereign in the present century".

King George VI fully supported the appeasement of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and was strongly opposed to Winston Churchill becoming Prime Minister in May 1940. The King wanted Lord Halifax to replace Neville Chamberlain.

Geoffrey Rush says the line, "It makes it official." There is a similarly line in the source novel for The Book Thief (2013), another Rush movie.

After delivering his wartime address, King George VI is greeted outside the radio room by Sir Winston Churchill who says to the King "Couldn't have said it better myself, Sir". While he didn't stutter, it is known that Winston Churchill suffered from a speech impediment himself. This exchange never happened in reality and was invented for the film.

This film features two Death-eaters, Helena Bonham Carter and Timothy Spall, and a Hogwarts headmaster, Michael Gambon, from the Harry Potter films.