The King's Speech: The making of a very British smash hit

By Martyn Palmer

The King's Speech has captured the imagination of cinema audiences around the world. But it almost never happened. Here, its key players reveal the story behind a movie phenomenon

'I actually used my voice very badly for a while,' said Colin Firth who plays King George VI

The King’s Speech has swept all before it to become a critically acclaimed, worldwide box-office success. The story of an unconventional Australian therapist, Lionel Logue, who teaches the painfully shy King George VI to overcome a crippling speech impediment and lead his country into World War II, has been nominated for 14 Baftas and 12 Oscars.

With exclusive interviews with lead star Colin Firth, the producers and back-room staff, together with candid onset photography and the set designer’s beautifully detailed paintings, Live lets the movie team speak for itself about the making of the film of the year.

The story began in April 2008, when, soon after British producer Iain Canning set up new film company See-Saw Films, a play by writer (and childhood stammerer) David Seidler arrived in his office. It had been sent to him by valued contact and Bedlam Productions chief Gareth Unwin; he had a hunch that it could be adapted for the screen. Canning agreed on a joint production – and that Colin Firth was perfect to play the Duke of York.

In August 2009, with director Tom Hooper and a cast also now including Helena Bonham Carter, the team looked for funding – but the timing, just after the financial crisis, could hardly have been worse... 

Tom Hooper, director I have armies of agents who you would think would deliver the great script to you. But in this case, my mum (author Meredith Hooper), who is an Australian, was invited to a fringe theatre reading of a play called The King’s Speech by some Australian friends.
They were desperately trying to drum up some people to come and see this play in London. She said, ‘You’ve got to read this, it’s really fascinating,’ but I had about 30 unread scripts on my desk. She nagged away at me for about three months until I finally did read it. And I was blown
away by it… 

Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth prepare for a scene set in the speech therapist's consultancy rooms in Harley Street, which was actually filmed at 33 Portland Place, a private town house owned by Sir Edward Davenport, notoriously once used for swingers' parties. Locations manager Jamie Lengyel said: 'It had the shabby finish that we we were looking for'

Iain Canning, producer It was tough to get films made at that time in 2009. The Lehman Brothers crash had just happened and we were trying to finance a British period movie, which is always difficult. We also had a very small time-frame to do it - about a couple of months - because we knew that we only had Geoffrey Rush available for a limited period, and so we were under real pressure.
Gareth Unwin, producer We'd wanted Geoffrey Rush for the part of Lionel Logue right from the start - and happily I have a friend who lives two doors away from him in Melbourne, Australia. So we bunged the stage play through his letterbox.

Iain Canning Once we had Geoffrey we drew up a list of other actors and Colin was at the top of that list. I remember going into a meeting with one of the key UK financiers and they asked, 'So we have Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth?' And I said, 'Well, we haven't actually got Colin yet.' But Colin loved it. He is a very smart, articulate man and actor, and was fascinated by George VI and the story, and also the qualities of Englishness and English reserve, which he has been doing on screen for years.

Archbishop Cosmo Lang (Sir Derek Jacobi), Winston Churchill (Timothy Spall) and Neville Chamberlain (Roger Parrott) between takes at Englefield House, the Berkshire mansion owned by Tory MP Richard Benyon, which was used to recreate the Buckingham Palace State Rooms

Colin Firth Bertie (the King was christened Albert) had to do something that you could almost describe as heroic in order to get a sentence out. The courage it took to face up to a microphone and deliver a live broadcast to millions of people, not just in England but across what was then the Empire - well, he had to face his biggest demons. He wasn't afraid of action in World War I, but the idea of speaking, and speaking publicly, terrified him. If you speak to anyone who has a stammer they will tell you that's all they think about. I spoke to David (Seidler, the original playwright) about it because he su ffered with a stammer himself. He said you even change what you order in a restaurant because you can't say 'B' - you won't order beef; you'll have fish, because you can say 'F'. Bertie was terrified of maths classes because for him, F was a problem, and he was doing fractions.

The crew filming at Horse Guards Parade Ground, Downing Street's Back Garden Entrance

By December 2009, thanks to financing from Hollywood's Bob and Harvey Weinstein, the British Film Council and British distributors Momentum Pictures, the £9.5 million budget - less than a tenth of that of one of its Oscar rivals for Best Picture, 'Inception' - was finally in place. What they needed now was some good fortune researching the scripts...
Tom Hooper One of our researchers discovered, nine weeks before filming, that Lionel Logue's grandson, Mark, was living in London and had found all these papers in his aunt's attic. They had been left to him by his father, Anthony, the youngest of Lionel Logue's three sons, who have all died. They had never been seen before - unpublished diaries, fragments of an autobiography, even King George VI's medical report describing his rather weak diaphragm. To have insight into their relationship was incredible.

Helena Bonham Carter, Colin Firth and Tom Hooper inside the King's Rolls-Royce limousine at Wendover Woods, Buckinghamshire. Helena can be seen wearing a necklace: a double row of pearls, which she wears in much of the film - they cost just £1.50 at an Oxfam shop. 'I pursued Helena ruthlessly,' says Hooper. 'I'm so pleased because when you see footage of the real Queen Mother you realise how much she has caught her spirit'

Mark Logue, Lionel Logue's grandson My grandfather was a hero to me but not many other people had heard of him until the film. He didn't tell many people about his relationship with the King. There was confidentiality about what he did with him and that trickled down through my father and his brothers so it wasn't really talked about much in the family. And the diaries and letters weren't lent to anyone unless they came to us with o fficial permission from Clarence House or Buckingham Palace.
I have two aunts who are both in their nineties and they come from the old school; they are very reverential, and at first they were against co-operating with the production. But the film was going to be made anyway and this was a great opportunity to make sure they got it right. I showed my aunts the script. One shook her head and said, 'No, that just wouldn't happen, Lionel would never have called the King "Bertie".'

Thirties London was carefully reconstructed with dirt, original-design posters and smog effects

Jamie Lengyel, locations manager: 'It took about three weeks and I had about 20 guys working on it - painters, construction, props'

Tom Hooper Lionel only started writing the diaries when Bertie became King and nothing when Bertie was plain old Duke of York, as I don't think Lionel realised that this was particularly noteworthy in terms of posterity, which is interesting in how it reflects his sense of the Duke of York's standing. When he became King the penny dropped; even in his diaries, he is careful not to talk too much about the detail of the therapy. One of the most valuable things I got out of it was the dialogue. For example, at the end of the speech when Lionel says, 'You still stammered on the "W"', and the King says, 'Well, I had to throw in a few to show them it was me.' That is a direct quote from the diary. That was last spoken out loud by King George VI and Lionel Logue.
Mark Logue Some entries are almost like scenes that go straight into the film. For the eve of war speech, Lionel had mapped out the whole day, what rooms they used in the Palace and where people were sitting. My father died in 2001 but seeing the props and the interiors made me realise that it was the landscape of my father's youth and I was seeing it through my father's eyes. In Lionel's archive there were things like letterheads and business cards and letters where he talked about his methods for treating people, including the King - getting them to recite limericks and shouting out loud through an open window. Things like that provided them with a lot of details.

Tom Hooper arranges home-made speakers on a desk at Lancaster House. Eve Stewart, production designer, says: 'The King would deliver the speech in a cupboard and then go out to his desk for a photograph and pretend that the speech had been made from there.' Hooper: 'It was basically a PR picture'

Colin Firth Unless they have extraordinary natural gifts, most people have to learn to use their voice if they have to speak in public or perform as an actor. I actually used my voice very badly for a while. It's not the same as a stammer but it was a testing period if you want to be an actor, because your voice is your means of expression. Bertie faced a terrible predicament because if you are frightened of speaking, the last thing you want to do is speak live to the Empire - you wouldn't even want the job of speaking to a classroom of children. If he had been born a generation before, when radio hadn't really come in as mass media, he wouldn't have had to do it. A generation later, and you could be recorded and edited. But that wasn't the case then - it was live, unedited and direct. And his adversaries, Hitler, Franco and Mussolini, were the best in the medium.
Tom Hooper The famous photograph of Bertie and the microphone in his navel kit sitting at his desk in a grand room turns out to be fake. It's posed. They didn't do his speeches as King in this grand scenario; he did it standing up at an old school desk with the window open with his jacket off; all details that we found through the diaries. The picture of him looking very regal at this desk is basically a PR picture. Research often leads you to a more unusual and interesting understanding of history.

Of all the actors in The King's Speech by far the most qualified for the material were the corgis. Supplied by Animals O Kay. run by Kay Raven, they also appeared in the TV docudrama The Queen and the movie The Queen, starring Helen Mirren. Here they are petted between shots by Princess Elizabeth, played by Freya Wilson; Ramona Marquez, from BBC sitcom Outnumbered, plays Princess Margaret

The King being driven up to Balmoral in his Rolls-Royce 25/30 limousine. The art director hired the Rolls-Royce from a car company called TLO, based in Windsor, which specialises in vintage vehicles for films

Mark Logue At the time my grandfather was regarded as a bit of a quack by the established medical profession, whose best advice in those days was to take up smoking to 'relax his throat' and put marbles in his mouth. But they became friends and Lionel had Christmas dinner with the Royal Family on numerous occasions. The King's Christmas Day broadcast was live and so Lionel would go up to Sandringham to be there for the broadcast and stay and have dinner with them. I've got documents that show the seating plan around the table. I've even got some of the jokes they pulled from the crackers. And there's a little note saying 'the King loved this joke'.
Colin Firth My sister, Kate, is a voice coach and in some cases she uses a very physical approach. I talked to her about Lionel's methods - rolling people on the floor, swinging them around - and she said that would be part of breaking down inhibitions. Because you can't insist on ceremony when you are rolling on the floor or if you are making silly noises.
With a tiny budget and a shooting schedule of just 39 days, Hooper and his team faced a challenging race against the clock to get 'The King's Speech' in the can, not just because of the schedules of their leading actors, but because Hooper insisted on using 35 locations.

A crew member holds a tape measure before a scene. As Eve Stewart explains: 'The key grip is lining up the shot and in particular where the microphone needs to be. The microphones are quite primitive so you have to be exact'

Jamie Lengyel, locations manager We went to Balmoral, Sandringham and Buckingham Palace, just as tourists, to see how they looked. And then we approached the press office at the Palace with a synopsis of the film and asked whether it was possible to view some of the more private areas. But they have a blanket ban. So we used four or five different places for different aspects of the Palace - Lancaster House (a 19th-century mansion owned by the Foreign Office) was our main location, and gave us the long corridors we needed to shoot the walk that Bertie does on his way to make the eve of war speech.
The King's office in Buckingham Palace was filmed at Halton House (near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire) and we did a scene at Drapers Hall, a Livery Hall in the City of London. Englefield House (the Berkshire mansion owned by Tory MP Richard Benyon) was one of our key locations - we used that for the entrance to Buckingham Palace, for the scene where Lionel comes to see Bertie at the Palace for the first time and the scenes with George V at Sandringham. Knebworth House in Hertfordshire was used for Balmoral. Westminster Abbey said 'No', so we used Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire.

Tom Hooper with Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush at Portland Place

Gareth Unwin We had some quite large crowd scenes which we did up in Bradford at the Odsal Stadium (home of the Bradford Bulls rugby league team) and Elland Road in Leeds (Leeds United's ground) which were both doubling for Wembley Stadium, where Colin is making the closing speech at the Empire Exhibition. It was on a cold, wet, drizzly day and we had reports coming back from the set that some of the extras were saying that they couldn't believe an actor as great as Colin Firth couldn't get his lines right... they didn't realise it was his performance!
Jamie Lengyel We prepared everything at Leeds, including the blow-up inflatables used to bulk out the crowd. We dressed 5,000 inflatables in costume and drove them over to Bradford by truck. We had about 400 real extras and we placed them around Colin, and the inflatables - basically plastic, life-sized blow up dolls - are further away. The fact that it was period helped, because our dummies could wear hats. Replicas of period microphones were made by specialist model-makers, and the big Wembley loudspeakers by a blacksmith near Leeds.

Eve Best as Mrs Simpson; Guy Pearce (Edward VIII) is in the background

Geoffrey Rush The storyline happens mostly through the winter and Tom was really intrigued when he kept on reading about the 'peasouper' fogs. As he'd heard from his 90-year-old neighbour, sometimes the fog would be so thick in the Thirties that if you were in a taxi, you would have to get out and walk in front of it to show the taxi the way because the driver would only have two metres of visibility. Tom has really gone for that atmosphere. He wants the exteriors shrouded in a kind of gloom that is a metaphor for what is hanging over Bertie's life.

Hugo Vickers, Royal adviser My job was to point out a few things that could be done better, but it only needed a few tiny tweaks. I once saw the Queen Mother at a charity event at St James's Palace and one of the ladies said, 'Oh Ma'am, would you lunch with us again in the summer?' And she turned it down in the most delightful way. She looked into the middle distance and her forefinger went up and she said, 'Always such a treat,' and so that line slipped in. Helena used it in the scene where she meets Logue's wife and they are about to have tea.

The dreaded BBC microphone, arranged so that the King can stand up as he gives his speech. Tom Hooper (right) directs Firth (left) for the scene, which took place at Buckingham Palace but was actually shot at Elstree Studios, one of the few times that the film made use of studios rather than sets. Eve Stewart, production designer: 'Lionel would have wanted to make it small and intimate and cosy so that Bertie would feel safer. I used curtains for the drapes - velvet, chenile and some silks that I bought at a market in Tring'

Jenny Beavan, costume designer The biggest challenges on The King's Speech were time and the lack of money. The uniforms were a massive challenge because you can't just go and rent them. Colin wears the Admiral Of The Fleet uniform and a costume house had a jacket, but it had the wrong collar so we made our own. And then I found the epaulets in an antiques market in London. The medals (see Hugo Vickers's panel below) were borrowed from various places and we made his Order of the Garter blue sash, so it was a conglomeration. I'm always on the lookout for things wherever I can find them: Helena was wearing original Thirties coats and some hats from Cosprop (a London costume house).
One of Helena's necklaces - a double row of pearls that she wears in a lot of the scenes - cost precisely £1.50 from an Oxfam shop and they were perfect. And the Queen Mother always wore her pearls...

Colin Firth filming a Balmoral scene at Knebworth

Hugo Vickers There were little things like getting the bow right - people have a habit of bowing from the waist when really, you stand dead straight and do a quick neck bow, head down, head up. The stars are brilliant and want to learn but with the extras, who were all dressed up like generals, it was a continual battle to get them to do as they were meant to.
Eve Stewart, production designer We had to completely re-decorate rooms to make them look authentic. For example, there's a scene in Bertie's house, when he's still the Duke of York, with his family and the corgis.
We filmed that in Portland Place, London. I'd looked at old photographs and the Yorks' house was meant to be a little shabby, like the Royals had dumped them there, with some old bits of furniture. The real house, which is privately owned, was very modern. So we put the Thirties wallpaper up and made sure that any traces of the 21st century - flashing red smoke alarm lights, security systems, entry phones, double glazing - were got rid of. And we had to make it all look shabby and slightly uncared-for.
I watched old newsreels, went to the Victoria and Albert Museum and combed old copies of Country Life magazine. We got lucky with the wallpaper for Logue's house - I found 13 rolls of period wallpaper, unused, in a little place in Lincoln. It had an orangey/ green fan pattern and was absolutely perfect... and cost about £50 a roll.

Sir Derek Jacobi (Archbishop Cosmo Lang) stands in the centre of the Accession Council Chamber, filmed at Drapers Hall, London - founded 600 years ago and one of the Twelve Great Livery Companies in the City of London. Situated in Throgmorton Street, it was bought from King Henry VIII in 1543 for about £1,200 and at one point in its history it had been the house of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex and Chief Minister to Henry, but had been forfeited to the King on Cromwell's execution in July 1540

Jenny Beavan I'm a terrific magpie - you have to be. I got my cufflinks and collar studs for Colin's shirts at a market for £2 a pair.
Eve Stewart I'm really nervous of using things that have been in other films because there's this terrible group of people called 'lampspotters' - they try to spot a lamp or something that has been used in other productions and then they put it up on the internet. As in, 'that was in Miss Marple, you lazy sod!'
Early screenings of 'The King's Speech', both in the UK and in America, created a buzz. The film has now taken £45 million at the U.S. box office alone. It's been nominated for 14 Baftas at next Sunday's ceremony including Best Actor for Colin Firth, Best Supporting Actress for Helena Bonham Carter, Best Supporting Actor for Geoffrey Rush, Best Film, Best Director and other categories including cinematography, editing, production design, sound and costume. At the Oscars, on February 27, Hooper and his team are nominated in 12 categories - Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Film, Best Director, cinematography, costume, editing, music, sound mixing and best screenplay.

Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush in Regent's Park, London

Eve Stewart I saw the film at an early screening for the cast and crew in London and you can't help noticing all the things you've done wrong. I sat there thinking 'Oh God, that wallpaper doesn't join up properly,' and, 'There's a horrible scratch on that floor, we should have got rid of that.' And then I noticed there was a smoke alarm that hadn't been covered up in the scene where he's making his eve-of-war speech, which we filmed at Lancaster House and is meant to be Buckingham Palace. I mentioned that to Tom and luckily it was digitally removed.
Gareth Unwin During filming the nickname for our film among the crew was My Left Throat (a pun on My Left Foot, the film that earned Daniel Day-Lewis an Oscar). Ironically, while we were filming The King's Speech Colin was up for an Oscar for A Single Man. We all used to joke, 'We don't want him to win for that - we want him to win for The King's Speech.'

Colin Firth recording the closing speech at the Empire Exhibition, recorded at Elland Road football stadium with 400 extras, their numbers swelled by inflatable dolls

The Baftas are on Feb 13. The Oscars are on Feb 27

THE DRAWING BOARD

These illustrations are the work of production designer Eve Stewart, 50, who is nominated for an Academy Award for The King's Speech.
'Before I start I always do a lot of research,' she says. 'I am a stickler for authenticity. I'll watch old newsreels, I'll go to the Victoria and Albert Museum, that sort of thing. Then I'll do sketches that we can work from, a design of how we want the room to look.

Buckingham Palace: The planned camera shot in which Bertie walks past dignitaries to give his famous speech, including BBC cabling positions and stage instructions. Inset: delivering his speech in front of assembled luminaries in the Accession Council Chamber, Drapers Hall, London

'I did my illustrations after going through the script with Tom Hooper. I filled up about three notebooks. I used ink and watercolours because it's really quick. I had a discussion with Tom to get an idea of how we wanted the room to look and that will be the first part of the process - it's an illustration of what we're aiming for.

At Logue's consultation room: The scene in which Elizabeth sits on Bertie during a breathing exercise (left). At Logue's rooms: Bertie's first consultation (right)

'After that we'll do more technical drawings. I can do one of those sketches in about half an hour, an hour. I do them on every film I work on - I do hundreds of the things.
'If this had been an American film it would have had a budget eight times as big, but there's a kind of craft-orientated spirit the British have - we make stuff ourselves and we enjoy that.'

Illustration for exterior scene, filmed in Kennington, London