Anne Reid and Caroline Quentin on By Royal Appointment and Playing the Queen

Ever since they began playing mother and daughter twenty-two years ago at the start of three seasons of the TV series Life Begins, Anne Reid and Caroline Quentin have been friends. “She even came to live next door to me at one point,” says Reid. “She used to get me drunk a lot.” Against her will? “Oh, absolutely: I’d be teetotal if it weren’t for her…” Cue: much laughter from the two of them.

That’s the hallmark of their conversations and, clearly, their friendship. Yet the casting of the pair of them in By Royal Appointment, the first play by Daisy Goodwin – best known for her ITV series Victoria – had nothing to do with them. It was simply a very happy coincidence after Reid had been attached to the play for a couple of years after taking part in a reading.

They’re talking to David Benedict…

“It’s definitely a four-hander”

Anne Reid: “We’re very lucky. It’s the loveliest cast all round. It’s the story of the Queen’s life as seen through her clothes and it’s definitely a four-hander so we have a designer played by James Wilby and a milliner played by James Dreyfus. Caroline plays my dresser and I play Her Majesty the Queen and it’s been an ambition of mine to play her.”

David Benedict: Am I right in thinking that, for years, the idea of portraying the Queen, other than as a royal impersonator, was a no-go area and the first dramatic portrayal of the Queen wasn’t until 1988 when Prunella Scales starred in Alan Bennett’s one-act play A Question of Attribution?

AR: Yes! It was shock horror that anyone would dare to play the Queen. Now it seems…

Caroline Quentin: De rigeur!

AR: Absolutely. But this is very different to something like The Crown. This is very funny.

“Big laughs and deep emotion”

CQ: It is funny, but it’s very moving too. We’ve just done a scene where the Queen presents one of the members of her team with an award and he is so desperately delighted and has just lost his father and it’s deeply touching… and then, seconds later, big laughs. And it’s properly entertaining for people around my generation because Daisy has written this play around the really memorable clothes. You don’t know you remember them until you actually see them and then you suddenly think, ‘I remember that pink hat and coat,’ or ‘Oh, yes, that was an extraordinary hat’. The narrative is told through couture: it’s amazing.”

DB: My mother was a huge monarchist and always commented on the Queen’s outfits so I realise I know all sorts of things about her wardrobe, like how she often wore clothes by Norman Hartnell.

CQ: Yes! My mother was obsessed with Norman Hartnell. Obsessed! She was Canadian and the image of the Royal family was very important to her.

“I met the Queen five times”

DB: Did either of you meet the Queen? Did you meet her when you were made CBE?

AR: Yes! I was an MBE to start with.

DB: And then you got an upgrade.

AR: Yes. And I’ve got to send the MBE back. So I met the Queen then, and I performed in Romeo and Juliet for her at Buckingham Palace. I didn’t enjoy it at all, it was so stressful. And then I met her when I was presented to her at two parties in her jubilee year and then again at the opening of BBC’s New Broadcasting House. So five times in all.

DB: It’s different for you, Caroline, because the public doesn’t know your character.

CQ: I think she is an amalgam of several dressers because in the play I am with Her Majesty for about forty years and in real life she would have had numerous dressers over that time.

“A gap between appearance and truth”

AR: Your character is very ambitious.

CQ: Terribly. I think what Daisy has looked at is what it is like to work for very important people. I think the gap between what people present and what’s actually going on behind the scenes is really fun. I’m fascinated by any group dynamic, but there is something special about a group of people who lead a life like nobody else. Daisy has already lifted the curtain on the previous Royal Family in Victoria and this play just lifts a lid on something that none of us will otherwise know. And all the relationships in the play are powerful in their own different way.

AR: Well, yes, but I am The Queen and you do what I say.

DB: I’m hoping that’s also true of the rehearsal room…

AR: Oh absolutely…

CQ: Not!

“Responsibility and transformation”

DB: When you are playing someone like Maddie in Jonathan Creek or Celia in Last Tango in Halifax, your only responsibility is to the writer’s work and the detail of your characterisation. How different is it to play a real-life character?

AR: I have a huge responsibility to get the voice right. And her posture. None of the Royal Family slouch: I think they are taught that from very early on. Yet in a funny way I have an easier job than the others because they have to create their own characters. I have to make her as believable as possible. And it’s nice for me to be playing upper class. Normally when there’s a Northern, working-class person, that would be me. So I’m loving this!

“The delicate dynamic of dressing”

DB: Some actors love doing plays like this because it allows them to bury themselves in research. Is that what you’re doing?

AR: I worked with John Hurt once in a film in which I played a small part and it was based on a book. I’d read it and I asked him if he had and he said, “No, I just do what’s in the script.” That’s what I do now. Although, obviously, I already know a lot about the Queen because everyone does.

CQ: I’ve loved looking at all the costumes and the jewellery.

DB: The relationship between a dresser and the person dressed is very intimate.

CQ: It’s delicate. One of my character’s first lines is ‘I was personal assistant, I was advisor, I was curator, I was her best friend.’

AR: And you were a stoker’s daughter from Wigan.

CQ: Yes: she is absolutely not a lady-in-waiting from the aristocracy. She’s the daughter of a dressmaker who works her way up through the hierarchy.

AR: And quite dangerous…

“Possessive or protective?”

DB: It sounds like a portrait of an increasingly intimate friendship.

CQ: When you work for someone over a long period of time, when does working for someone turn into loving someone?

AR: Your character is very possessive of me.

CQ: Protective.

AR: Well, yes, but also possessive. But then the Queen really needs her.

DB: And how do you address one another on stage?

AR: Well the Queen has a nickname for her dresser but, talking to my character, it’s always the formal arrangement.

DB: According to Debrett’s, the record-keeper and chronicler of British society, the monarch was to be greeted initially as Your Majesty, and then ‘ma’am to rhyme with lamb’ not ‘ma’am as in farm’.

CQ: Exactly!

By Royal Appointment  runs at Leeds Grand Theatre between 24th and 28th June
Images: Nobby Clark