A cornucopia of casting has been announced over the weekend for Tom Hooper's The King's Speech, the story of a British monarch with a speech impediment. Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush were already cast; they've now been joined by Helena Bonham-Carter, Michael Gambon, Derek Jacobi, Guy Pearce, Jennifer Ehle and Timothy Spall. Yes, it appears that Hooper is determined to find out just how many distinguished British actors he can fit in one film.
Firth will be glamming down to play George VI, father to the current Queen and reluctant ascendant to the throne after his brother abdicated to run off and marry an American divorcee and swan about the Riviera buying jewellery. George, however, was unprepared for the throne and suffered from a stammer that made him very worried about speaking in public. Rush will play the speech therapist, Lionel Logue, who treated the impediment and gave him his mojo.
There's no official word yet on who everyone else is playing, although rumour has it that Bonham-Carter will play Queen Elizabeth, aka the late Queen Mother, which is brilliant counter-intuitive casting if you ask us, and Michael Gambon will play George V (whose father Edward he previously played in The Lost Prince). But really, it barely matters with a cast this good. Heck, Gambon could play the Queen Mother and we'd believe it.
The director's Tom Hooper, who last gave us The Damned United and worked on TV drama John Adams to much acclaim. David Seidler wrote the script.