"What’s most daring about it isn’t that it’s a satire. It’s a story that dares to paint people in power as complex, rounded, conflicted human beings just like you and me."
--Peter Morgan
In the days following the death of Princess Diana, Great Britain exploded in a paroxysm of public grief that shocked the tightly contained, tradition-bound world of the Queen of England. The grieving nation was desperate for comfort from its beloved queen, and for many days it did not come. Elizabeth II, stunned by the unexpected depth of the public emotion at Diana’s passing and the vitriol of the British media toward her for not joining in, was forced to realize that her people felt abandoned and were in danger of abandoning her. This is the story told in The Queen, directed by Stephen Frears and starring Helen Mirren, Michael Sheen, and James Cromwell.
Peter Morgan’s screenplay, drawn from extensive interviews, devoted research, discreet sources, and informed imagination, shows us one of the modern world’s last great monarchs as she has never been seen before -- as a vulnerable human being in her darkest hour, struggling to preserve all she holds most dear.
