No One Played the Queen Better Than Herself (Column)

Queen Elizabeth II was the first British monarch to become a film and television character while she was still on the throne.

Raucous historical romps about Henry VIII and Elizabeth I were all very well, but showing what a living king or queen got up to behind closed palace doors? That was another, almost treasonous matter.

Even as recently as 1991, when Prunella Scales starred in a BBC film of Alan Bennett’s National Theatre play “A Question Of Attribution,” Bennett said “it still feels quite bold to portray her in the flesh.” And the practice was still contentious enough in 2020 for the UK’s then Culture Secretary, Oliver Dowden, to ask Netflix to put a disclaimer on screen before every episode of “The Crown,” explaining that the show was not actually a documentary.But like so much else during Elizabeth II’s uniquely long reign, the protocol changed to a

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