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David Seidler, Oscar-Winning Writer of ‘The King’s Speech,’ Dies at 86

He drew on his own painful experiences with a stutter in depicting King George VI’s struggles to overcome his impediment and rally Britain in World War II.

By Trip Gabriel

David Seidler, a screenwriter whose Oscar-winning script for “The King’s Speech” — about King George VI conquering a stutter to rally Britain at the outset of World War II — drew on his own painful experience with a childhood stammer, died on Saturday on a fly-fishing trip in New Zealand. He was 86 and lived in Santa Fe, N.M.

His manager, Jeff Aghassi, disclosed the death in a statement but did not cite a cause. “David was in the place he loved most in the world — New Zealand — doing what gave him the greatest peace, which was fly-fishing,” Mr. Aghassi said. “If given the chance, it is exactly as he would have scripted it.”

On winning the Academy Award for best original screenplay for “The King’s Speech” (2010), Mr. Seidler said from the Hollywood stage that he was accepting on behalf of all stutterers. “We have a voice; we have been heard,” he said.

The movie, a historical drama in the form of a buddy picture about an afflicted future monarch (Colin Firth) and his talented but unlicensed speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush), was a commercial and critical success. It also won Oscars for best picture, best director (Tom Hooper) and best actor (Mr. Firth).

Mr. Seidler, who was born in England but emigrated with his family to the United States as a child during World War II, spent much of his career writing little-noticed television projects, including soap operas, a biopic of the Partridge Family singers and the TV movie “Onassis: The Richest Man in the World” (1988), written with a longtime co-writer, Jacqueline Feather. That same year, he broke onto the big screen as a co-writer (with Arnold Schulman) of “Tucker: The Man and His Dream,” about the automobile inventor Preston Tucker, directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

But Hollywood’s doors did not swing open widely for him before “The King’s Speech,” or in the years that followed. A stage version of the film that he wrote toured England in 2012. After transferring to London’s West End, it closed earlier than expected because of poor ticket sales.

Mr. Seidler’s stammer, he told Patrick Healy in an interview for The New York Times in 2011, developed when he was a toddler, shortly after his family had moved to the United States — it might have been set off by the trauma of wartime relocation — and persisted through his high school years on Long Island.

He tried to conquer the impediment using some of the same therapies that Lionel Logue, played by Mr. Rush, imposes on the future George VI in the movie: placing marbles in his mouth as he speaks and taking up smoking. None of them worked.

Mr. Seidler told the site filmcritic.com that his parents, aiming to inspire him, tuned the family radio to George VI’s speeches during the war as object lessons of mastering a stutter.

“They would say to me, ‘David, he was a much worse stutterer than you, and listen to him now. He’s not perfect. But he can give these magnificent, stirring addresses that rallied the free world,’” Mr. Seidler said.

At 16, he recalled, he had a “profanity-laden, F-bomb-filled emotional catharsis” like one that King George, who was known as “Bertie,” his childhood nickname, experiences in the film. “I thought that if I’m stuck with stuttering, you’re all stuck with listening with me,” he told The Times, inserting an expletive.

Soon after, his stutter faded away in conversations.

David Seidler was born on Aug. 4, 1937, in London, to Doris (Falkoff) Seidler, a painter and printmaker, and Bernard Seidler, a fur broker. He graduated from Cornell University in 1959. He is survived by two adult children, Marc and Maya Seidler.

The screenplay of “The King’s Speech” gestated with Mr. Seidler for decades. In interviews , he said he had set the project aside for years until after the death in 2002 of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, widow of George VI, who had asked him not to pursue it in her lifetime.

In a 2011 interview with The Times, he compared the process of drawing on his experiences as a stutterer to remembering from afar a bad toothache.

“While you’ve got the toothache it’s all you think about, but as soon as you go to the dentist, and he or she takes away the pain, the last thing you want to think about was how that tooth ached,” he said. “You put it away from your mind and forget about it. The same with stuttering. So it was only by waiting until I had reached the stage of … let me use the euphemism maturity … when by nature you start to look back on your life anyway, that it allowed me to revisit that pain, that sense of isolation and loneliness, which I think helped the script immensely.”

Trip Gabriel is a national correspondent. He covered the past two presidential campaigns and has served as the Mid-Atlantic bureau chief and a national education reporter. He formerly edited the Styles sections. He joined The Times in 1994. More about Trip Gabriel

David Seidler, ‘The King’s Speech’ screenwriter, dies at 86

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David Seidler, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of the acclaimed 2010 drama “The King’s Speech,” has died. He was 86.

Seidler’s manager, Jeff Aghassi, told The Times that Seidler died Saturday while fly-fishing in New Zealand. No specific cause of death was given, but Aghassi said, “David was in the place he loved most in the world — New Zealand — doing what gave him the greatest peace, which was fly-fishing. If given the chance, it is exactly as he would have scripted it.”

“The King’s Speech” swept the top categories at the Oscars in 2011, winning Seidler the award for original screenplay; the film also was named best picture, and Tom Hooper won in the directing category and Colin Firth won lead actor.

“The King’s Speech” is based on the true story of Britain’s King George VI (portrayed by Firth), who struggled with a severe lifelong stutter and was helped by Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) ahead of his first national radio address after the start of World War II.

“Before the invention of radio, it was enough that they were these supreme, remote figures, who you saw at a distance over the heads of thousands of people, and they had great plumes on their heads so you knew which one was the king,” Seidler told The Times in 2010 . “As a common man, you never heard the king speak. And then suddenly, you not only heard him speak, but you could hear him in your living room, in the privacy of your home where you could comment rudely about him. Big difference.”

Seidler himself overcame a childhood stutter, an experience he drew on in crafting an empathetic portrayal of George VI as he’s faced with a monumental task of public speaking at a perilous moment for his country.

“You know, I couldn’t have written this story when I was 33,” he told The Times in 2011 . “Life provides all sorts of terrible obstacles and only later do you realize that they are really all for the good. I was crushed when [George VI’s widow, Queen Elizabeth] the Queen Mother told me not to write this in her lifetime. But I wasn’t ready. To tell the story correctly, I had to plunge myself back into the experience of being a stutterer. That meant going back to the pain and isolation I knew as a child. And I know inside that I just couldn’t have done that as a younger man. I wasn’t ready until now.”

Seidler, who was born in 1937 in Britain, moved to the U.S. in the early days of World War II. He attended Cornell University, where he was friends with writer Thomas Pynchon. His early gigs in entertainment included writing Japanese monster-movie translation dubs, and he broke into TV with the 1960s series “Adventures of the Seaspray.”

Before “The King’s Speech,” Seidler had an up-and-down career of features, including 1988’s “Tucker: The Man and His Dream,” about automobile designer Preston Tucker, directed by his former high school classmate Francis Ford Coppola.

The two had a bitter falling-out after the film, though, and Seidler returned to his career in television, which included the 1999 children’s animated feature “Madeline: Lost in Paris.” Before that, he’d written biopic-style TV movies such as 1985’s “Malice in Wonderland,” which starred Elizabeth Taylor as Louella Parsons, and 1988’s “Onassis: the Richest Man in the World.”

He survived a cancer scare in the early 2000s that pushed him to finally tackle his life’s dream of writing the script that became “The King’s Speech.”

“I was feeling powerfully sorry for myself, but then I rallied and threw myself into my work,” he told The Times. “I said to myself, ‘David, if you’re not going to write Bertie’s [George VI, as he was known to family and close friends] story now, when exactly are you doing to do it?’ “

More recently, a stage version of “The King’s Speech” was a success on London’s West End and was planned for a Broadway debut before the 2020 pandemic. According to Aghassi, Seidler “had multiple projects in active development, including documentary, limited series and feature films.”

Seidler is survived by two adult children, Maya and Marc.

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David Seidler, The King’s Speech Screenwriter, Dead at 86

David Seidler, the screenwriter best known for 2010’s The King’s Speech , has died at the age of 86. “David was in the place he loved most in the world — New Zealand — doing what gave him the greatest peace which was fly-fishing,” his manager Jeff Aghassi said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter . “If given the chance, it is exactly as he would have scripted it.”

Seidler, who himself grew up with a stutter, won the Academy Award and BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay for The King’s Speech in 2010, which chronicled the true story of King George VI’s struggle with a speech impediment as he prepared to take the throne. Seidler also wrote the 2012 stage adaptation of the film. His other work includes 1988’s Tucker: The Man and his Dream , 1998’s Quest for Camelot , and 1999’s Madeline: Lost in Paris .

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David Seidler, Oscar-winning writer of The King’s Speech , dies at 86

The British screenwriter earned several accolades for the 2010 film, including two BAFTA's and an Academy Award.

David Seidler, the Oscar-winning screenwriter behind 2010’s The King’s Speech , died Saturday while on a fly-fishing expedition in New Zealand. He was 86.

“David was in the place he loved most in the world — New Zealand — doing what gave him the greatest peace which was fly-fishing,” his longtime manager Jeff Aghassi told EW in a statement. “If given the chance, it is exactly as he would have scripted it.”

Born in London on Aug. 3, 1937, Seidler spent his early childhood years in the English city before his family relocated to New York amidst World War II. During the voyage, he developed a stutter and wouldn’t have a speech therapy breakthrough until he was 16. This partially inspired him to write The King’s Speech , which won him the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

The film tells the true story of King George VI’s ( Colin Firth ) struggle to overcome his severe stutter with the help of Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). The film picks up as George’s brother abdicates the throne, leaving George as the head of the British monarchy in 1937. The monarch goes on to forge a lasting friendship with Logue, as he prepares for his first wartime radio message after the start of World War II.

Michael Buckner/Getty

Ahead of the 2011 ceremony, Seidler was hesitant to discuss the film’s chances at the Academy Awards but told KPBS , "I have to be honest. Way down in the recesses of my soul, I thought this is the little film that could. I think this may really be able to get out there. I had this silent hope that I never expressed because it seemed so ridiculous and so far-fetched."

The film received 12 Oscar nominations at the 83rd Academy Awards and won four, including Best Picture. Firth took home a trophy for his performance as King George, and Tom Hooper won for Best Director. The King’s Speech earned many more accolades, including seven BAFTAs.

Seidler also penned a stage version of The King's Speech , which opened in London on the West End in 2012. The script has since been translated into more than half a dozen languages and performed across four continents. Plans for the play to head to Broadway fell through in 2020, following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Seidler wrote multiple TV and movie scripts over the years — many of which he co-penned with his former writing partner, Jacqueline Feather. Their credits include Dancing in the Dark, Come on, Get Happy: The Partridge Family Story, and By Dawn’s Early Light . They also worked on several animated children’s musicals, such as T he King and I, Quest for Camelot, and Madeline: Lost in Paris. Throughout his career, Seidler wrote episodes for series like Days of Our Lives, Another World, General Hospital, and Son of the Dragon . With Arnold Schulman, he cowrote Francis Ford Coppola ’s 1988 comedy drama Tucker: The Man and His Dream.

Seidler is survived by his children, Marc and Maya.

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Oscar winner David Seidler, writer of The King’s Speech, has died aged 86

Screenwriter who had stammer as a child wrote script about George VI, played by Colin Firth, overcoming speech impediment

David Seidler, best known for his Oscar-winning writing on The King’s Speech, has died aged 86, according to reports.

The London-born screenwriter, who had a stammer growing up, was inspired to write about the true story of how King George VI overcame his speech impediment with a speech and language therapist.

US outlets reported that the British writer died on Saturday, during a fly-fishing trip in New Zealand, according to his manager, Jeff Aghassi.

Aghassi said: “David was in the place he loved most in the world – New Zealand – doing what gave him the greatest peace, which was fly fishing. If given the chance, it is exactly as he would have scripted it.”

Seidler won the Oscar and Bafta award for best original screenplay for the 2010 historical drama, which starred Colin Firth , who won the best actor Bafta and Oscar for his depiction of the king. The project was also awarded the best picture Oscar and won best film and outstanding British film at the Baftas.

Seidler was also behind the stage adaptation of the film, which opened in the West End in 2012.

Throughout his career, Seidler wrote on a plethora of projects, including the animated children’s musicals The King and I, Quest for Camelot and Madeline: Lost in Paris.

Seidler won his first Writers’ Guild award for the 1988 biopic Onassis: The Richest Man in the World starring Raul Julia as the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. He also cowrote Francis Ford Coppola’s 1988 comedy drama Tucker: The Man and His Dream.

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‘The King’s Speech’ Writer David Seidler Dies on Fly-Fishing Trip

David Seidler , who won an Academy Award for writing the 2010 film The King’s Speech , died on Saturday at age 86. Longtime manager Jeff Aghassi said that Seidler died while fly-fishing, one of his favorite activities.

“David was in the place he loved most in the world — New Zealand — doing what gave him the greatest peace, which was fly-fishing,” Aghassi said in a statement, per Variety . “If given the chance, it is exactly as he would have scripted it.”

Seidler’s screen career started nearly 60 years ago when he wrote episodes for the Australia television series Adventures of the Seaspray .

In the 1980s, he scripted episodes of the Days of Our Lives , Another World , and General Hospital .

Seidler is also renowned for his biopic work, having co-written the TV movies Malice in Wonderland (starring Elizabeth Taylor ) and Onassis: The Richest Man in the World (starring Raul Julia ) and the feature film Tucker: The Man and His Dream (starring Jeff Bridges ).

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He frequently collaborated with writer Jacqueline Feather, with whom he worked on the animated films Quest for Camelot and The King and I in the late 1990s.

Seidler wrote The King’s Speech after idolizing King George VI — the film’s subject and a fellow stutterer — as a child.

“When I was old enough to listen to the radio, my parents would encourage me to listen to the king’s speeches,” Seidler recalled in a 2011 interview with Filmcritic.com . “They would say to me, ‘David, he was a much worse stutterer than you, and listen to him now. He’s not perfect. But he can give these magnificent, stirring addresses that rallied the free world.’ And he could do that as a king, with everyone listening intently to every syllable this man uttered. That’s tough. But if he could do that, I felt that there was hope for me.”

Quest for Camelot where to stream

The King and I (1999) where to stream

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Tucker: The Man and His Dream where to stream

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Onassis: the richest man in the world, quest for camelot, the king and i (1999), the king's speech, tucker: the man and his dream, david seidler.

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“as a union we’re irreplaceable”: wga awards full of strike talk as guild takes victory lap, david seidler dies: academy award-winning writer for ‘the king’s speech’ was 86.

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David Seidler , best known for his Academy Award-winning writing on The King’s Speech , died on Saturday, March 16 while on a fly-fishing expedition in New Zealand.  He was 86 and no cause was given.

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Seidler’s The King’s Speech went on to win Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor. The film focused on the story of King George VI (Colin Firth) overcoming his severe stutter, and his unexpected friendship with speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) in the lead up to World War II. 

The project, which he also intended as a stage play, was a labor of love for the screenwriter, who had a profound stutter as a child. Seidler also received two BAFTAs and the Humanitas Prize for the work.  

Aghassi said Seidler was a passionate teller of stories – whether it was among friends gathered for a meal, often also cooked by Seidler, or the audiences whose attention he captured through his scripts and plays. The stage version of The King’s Speech has been translated to more than a half-dozen languages and has been performed on four continents.

Having previously been performed on the London’s West End, its build-up to Broadway was cut short in 2020 by the COVID pandemic.  

Seidler’s other work included Onasiss: The Richest Man in the World (1988) and Tucker: The Man and his Dream (1988).

He continued to work on ideas that drew his interest, and at the time of his death he had multiple projects in active development, including documentaries, limited series, and feature films.  

Seidler is survived by his adult children, Marc and Maya.

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David Seidler, 'The King's Speech' screenwriter, dies at 86

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David Seidler, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of the acclaimed 2010 drama “The King’s Speech,” has died. He was 86.

Seidler’s manager, Jeff Aghassi, told The Times that Seidler died Saturday while fly-fishing in New Zealand. No specific cause of death was given, but Aghassi said, “David was in the place he loved most in the world — New Zealand — doing what gave him the greatest peace, which was fly-fishing. If given the chance, it is exactly as he would have scripted it.”

“The King’s Speech” swept the top categories at the Oscars in 2011, winning Seidler the award for original screenplay; the film also was named best picture, and Tom Hooper won in the directing category and Colin Firth won lead actor.

“The King’s Speech” is based on the true story of Britain’s King George VI (portrayed by Firth), who struggled with a severe lifelong stutter and was helped by Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) ahead of his first national radio address after the start of World War II.

“Before the invention of radio, it was enough that they were these supreme, remote figures, who you saw at a distance over the heads of thousands of people, and they had great plumes on their heads so you knew which one was the king,” Seidler told The Times in 2010 . “As a common man, you never heard the king speak. And then suddenly, you not only heard him speak, but you could hear him in your living room, in the privacy of your home where you could comment rudely about him. Big difference.”

Seidler himself overcame a childhood stutter, an experience he drew on in crafting an empathetic portrayal of George VI as he’s faced with a monumental task of public speaking at a perilous moment for his country.

“You know, I couldn’t have written this story when I was 33,” he told The Times in 2011 . "Life provides all sorts of terrible obstacles and only later do you realize that they are really all for the good. I was crushed when [George VI's widow, Queen Elizabeth] the Queen Mother told me not to write this in her lifetime. But I wasn’t ready. To tell the story correctly, I had to plunge myself back into the experience of being a stutterer. That meant going back to the pain and isolation I knew as a child. And I know inside that I just couldn’t have done that as a younger man. I wasn’t ready until now.”

Seidler, who was born in 1937 in Britain, moved to the U.S. in the early days of World War II. He attended Cornell University, where he was friends with writer Thomas Pynchon. His early gigs in entertainment included writing Japanese monster-movie translation dubs, and he broke into TV with the 1960s series “Adventures of the Seaspray.”

Before “The King’s Speech,” Seidler had an up-and-down career of features, including 1988’s “Tucker: The Man and His Dream,” about automobile designer Preston Tucker, directed by his former high school classmate Francis Ford Coppola.

The two had a bitter falling-out after the film, though, and Seidler returned to his career in television, which included the 1999 children’s animated feature “Madeline: Lost in Paris." Before that, he’d written biopic-style TV movies such as 1985’s “Malice in Wonderland,” which starred Elizabeth Taylor as Louella Parsons, and 1988’s “Onassis: the Richest Man in the World."

He survived a cancer scare in the early 2000s that pushed him to finally tackle his life’s dream of writing the script that became “The King’s Speech.”

“I was feeling powerfully sorry for myself, but then I rallied and threw myself into my work,” he told The Times. “I said to myself, ‘David, if you’re not going to write Bertie’s [George VI, as he was known to family and close friends] story now, when exactly are you doing to do it?’ “

More recently, a stage version of "The King's Speech" was a success on London's West End and was planned for a Broadway debut before the 2020 pandemic. According to Aghassi, Seidler "had multiple projects in active development, including documentary, limited series and feature films."

Seidler is survived by two adult children, Maya and Marc.

Get notified when the biggest stories in Hollywood, culture and entertainment go live. Sign up for L.A. Times entertainment alerts.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times .

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David Seidler, Oscar-Winning Writer of ‘The King’s Speech,’ Dies at 86

The 2010 drama took home Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay

David Seidler, the Academy Award-winning writer of the 2010 film “The King’s Speech,” died on Saturday. No cause of death was given. He was 86 years old.

Seidler’s film took home both Best Original Screenplay and several other Academy Awards at the 2011 ceremony, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor. The movie told the story of King George VI (Colin Firth), who battled a stutter, and his relationship with speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush).

Telling the story of George VI was a longtime dream of Seidler’s because he also grew up with a stutter. As relayed by the Stuttering Foundation , Seidler contended with the condition from his third birthday until the age of 16. He explained, “I had huge trouble with the ‘H’ sound, so when the telephone rang, I would break into a cold sweat, because I couldn’t say ‘hello.’”

“I don’t know if school still works this way, but in those days you had set places, and the teacher worked up and down the rows. If I could see her working toward me and she was just going to miss me that day, I would fake sick the next day so I didn’t have to go to school, because it was so terrifying to be called upon.”

Seidler, whose uncle also had a childhood stutter, attributed his condition to the stress of growing up Jewish in World War II-era Europe. His family moved to the United States in 1940 to escape the atrocities plaguing the continent.

In the same interview, he said his stutter contributed to his decision to become a writer. Seidler explained, “If you’re born with two conflicting traits — in my case, I was a born ham, but I was a stutterer — and if you want to be the center of attention but you can’t talk, you find another channel, and that’s writing.”

In a separate interview with Film Critic , Seidler said that King George VI became a beacon of hope for him. “By the time I arrived in New York City, I was stuttering, and it stayed with me right through my childhood and much of my adolescence. But the one ray of hope that I was given was the speeches of King George VI. In the latter stages of the war, when I was old enough to listen to the radio, my parents would encourage me to listen to the king’s speeches.”

“They would say to me, ‘David, he was a much worse stutterer than you, and listen to him now. He’s not perfect. But he can give these magnificent, stirring addresses that rallied the free world.’ And he could do that as a king, with everyone listening intently to every syllable this man uttered. That’s tough.”

After working as a writer, Seidler moved to Hollywood at the age of 40. He subsequently cowrote Francis Ford Coppola’s “Tucker: The Man and His Dream,” and the 1985 Elizabeth Taylor TV movie “Malice in Wonderland.”

Telling King George VI’s story had been in the back of Seidler’s mind since the 1980s. He wrote to the king’s widow, Elizabeth the Queen Mother, to ask permission. She requested that he wait until after her death. Seidler returned to the project after he was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2005; the king himself died from lung cancer. The Queen Mother had died in 2002.

“The King’s Speech” director Tom Hooper connected with Seidler after his mother attended a reading of the stage version of the story. Hooper told the Stuttering Foundation, “It’s clearly the best script of his life. He’s really writing about his own childhood experiences through the guise of these two characters.”

Seidler took home the Oscar for Writing (Original Screenplay) in 2011. His speech following his win for “The King’s Speech” was both moving and funny. He began, “The writer’s speech, this is terrifying. My father always said to me I would be a late bloomer. I believe I am the oldest person to win this particular award. I hope that record is broken quickly and often.”

“I would like to thank Her Majesty the Queen for not putting me in the Tower of London for using the Melissa Leo F-word ,” Seidler added. “And I accept this on behalf of all the stutterers throughout the world. We have a voice, we have been heard thanks to you, the Academy.”

Seidler was born in London in July 1937. He is survived by his two children, Maya and Marc.

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‘The King’s Speech’ writer David Seidler dies aged 86

By Mona Tabbara 2024-03-18T16:16:00+00:00

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Source: See Saw Films

‘The King’s Speech’

The King’s Speech screenwriter David Seidler has died aged 86.

London-born Seidler had a stammer, as had King George VI, the subject of his Bafta and Oscar-winning 2010 feature, produced by See-Saw Films and Bedlam Productions and directed by Tom Hooper, with Colin Firth playing the future king. Seidler won the Oscar and Bafta for best original screenplay.

A stage adaptation of the film opened in the West End in 2012, also written by Seidler.

According to reports, Seidler died while on a fly fishing trip in New Zealand.

“David was in the place he loved most in the world – New Zealand – doing what gave him the greatest peace, which was fly fishing,” Seidler’s manager Jeff Aghassi told BBC News. “If given the chance, it is exactly as he would have scripted it.”

He won his first Writers Guild award for the 1988 biopic Onassis: The Richest Man In The World, starring Raul Julia as Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. He also cowrote Francis Ford Coppola’s 1988 comedy drama Tucker: The Man And His Dream .

Seidler is survived by two children.

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The King’s Speech

A stirring, handsomely mounted tale of unlikely friendship starring Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Americans love kings, so long as they needn’t answer to them, and no king of England had a more American success story than that admirable underdog George VI, Duke of York, who overcame a dreadful stammer to rally his people against Hitler. A stirring, handsomely mounted tale of unlikely friendship starring Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush , “The King’s Speech ” explores the bond between the painfully shy thirtysomething prince and the just-this-side-of-common, yet anything-but-ordinary speech therapist who gave the man back his confidence. Weinstein-backed November release should tap into the same audience that made “The Queen” a prestige hit.

Though hardly intended as a public service message, “The King’s Speech” goes a long way to repair decades of vaudeville-style misrepresentation on the subject of stuttering, which traditionally serves either for comic effect (think Porky Pig) or as lazy shorthand for a certain softness of mind, character or spine. Screenwriter David Seidler approaches the condition from another angle entirely, spotlighting a moment in history when the rise of radio and newsreels allowed the public to listen to their leaders, shifting the burden of government from intellect to eloquence.

These pressures are too much for Prince Albert (Firth), whose crippling speech impediment causes public embarrassment at 1925’s British Empire Exhibition. Director Tom Hooper (HBO’s “John Adams,” “The Damned United”) alternates between nervous Albert and the fussy yet professional BBC announcer in this opening scene to contrast one man dragged into public speaking with another who’d elected the bloody job for himself.

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Albert’s father, King George V (authoritatively played by Michael Gambon), is no more fond of the wireless, but eventually embraces the device for a series of annual Christmas addresses. Though tough on his tongue-tied son, he views Albert as a more responsible successor than his reckless brother Edward (Guy Pearce), who indeed will famously renounce the throne to marry American socialite Wallis Simpson ( Eve Best ). But George V fears the stammer is unbefitting the throne. “In the past, all a king had to do was wear a uniform and not fall off his horse,” he laments.With responsibility for the crown looming, Albert’s wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter, in her most effectively restrained performance since “The Wings of the Dove”) seeks out the services of Lionel Logue (Rush), a frustrated Australian actor turned speech therapist. As portrayed by Rush, Logue is what some politely call a “force of nature” — all bluster, no tact, yet incredibly effective in his unconventional approach, rejecting the institutional thinking of the time in favor of vocal exercises and amateur psychotherapy.

While Seidler cleverly uses the prince’s handicap as a point of entry, “The King’s Speech” centers on the rocky connection that forms between Bertie (as the speech therapist calls the prince) and Lionel, whose extraordinary friendship arises directly from the latter’s insistence on a first-name, equal-to-equal dynamic quite unlike anything the Duke of York had previously encountered. Though few would deem it scandalous today, the film rather boldly dares to humanize a figure traditionally held at arm’s length from the public and treated with divine respect, deriving much of its humor from the brusque treatment the stuffy monarch-to-be receives from the irreverent Lionel (including a litany of expletives sure to earn the otherwise all-ages-friendly film an R rating).

While far from easy, both roles provide a delightful opportunity for Firth and Rush to poke a bit of fun at their profession. Firth (who is a decade older than Albert-cum-George was at the time of his coronation, and a good deal more handsome) has used the “stammering Englishman” stereotype frequently enough before, in such films as “Pride and Prejudice” and “A Month in the Country.” Here, the affliction extends well beyond bashful affectation, looking and sounding more like a man drowning in plain air as his face swells and his throat clucks, yet no words come out. Rush’s character, meanwhile, is that most delicious of caricatures, a recklessly bad actor whose shortcomings are embellished by someone who clearly knows better.

On the surface, Rush appears to have the showier of the two parts. But the big scenes are indisputably Firth’s, with two major speeches bookending the film (the latter one being the 1939 radio broadcast with which King George VI addressed a nation entering into war with Germany) and a surprisingly candid confession at roughly the midway point (in which Albert reveals the abusive treatment that likely created his stammer in the first place).

Hooper, who nimbly sidestepped the pitfalls of the generic sports movie in “The Damned United,” proves equally spry in the minefield of blue-blood biopics by using much the same m.o. — focusing on the uncommonly strong bond between two men (the director reunites with Timothy Spall here as a rather comical-looking Winston Churchill). Another repeat collaborator, production designer Eve Stewart, re-creates both royal digs and Logue’s wonderfully disheveled atelier, while Alexandre Desplat’s score gives the film an appropriate gravitas.

• Production: A Weinstein Co. (in U.S.) release presented with U.K. Film Council of a See-Saw Films/Bedlam production in association with Momentum Pictures, Aegis Film Fund, Molinare, FilmNation Entertainment. Produced by Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Gareth Unwin. Executive producers, Geoffrey Rush, Tim Smith, Paul Brett, Mark Foligno, Harvey Weinstein, Bon Weinstein. Co-producers, Peter Heslop, Simon Egan. Co-executive producers, Deepak Sikka, Lisbeth Savill, Phil Hope. Directed by Tom Hooper. Screenplay, David Seidler.
• Crew: Camera (color), Danny Cohen; editor, Tariq Anwar; music, Alexandre Desplat; music supervisor, Maggie Rodford; production designer, Eve Stewart; art director, Leon McCarthy; set decorator, Judy Farr; costume designer, Jenny Beavan; sound, John Midgley; re-recording mixer, Paul Hamblin; supervising sound editor, Lee Walpole; special effects supervisor, Mark Holt; visual effects supervisor, Tom Horton; line producer, Peter Heslop; associate producer, Charles Dorfman; assistant director, Martin Harrison; second unit camera, Matt Kenzie; casting, Nina Gold. Reviewed at Aidikoff screening room, Beverly Hills, Sept. 1, 2010. (In Telluride Film Festival; Toronto Film Festival -- Gala Presentations; London Film Festival -- Gala.) Running time: 118 MIN.
• With: King George VI - Colin Firth Lionel Logue - Geoffrey Rush Queen Elizabeth - Helena Bonham Carter King Edward VIII - Guy Pearce Winston Churchill - Timothy Spall Archbishop Cosmo Lang - Derek Jacobi Myrtle Logue - Jennifer Ehle Stanley Baldwin - Anthony Andrews Queen Mary - Claire Bloom Wallis Simpson - Eve Best King George V - Michael Gambon

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David Seidler (1937-2024)

IMDbPro Starmeter See rank

• 12 wins & 24 nominations total

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• screenplay by

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• July 13 , 1937
• London, England, UK
• March 16 , 2024
• New Zealand
• Spouses Mary Ann Tharaldsen 1961 - ? (divorced)

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• Trivia In 2011 at age of 74, he was the oldest winner of the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for The King's Speech (2010) . He held this record for one year, until Woody Allen won for Midnight in Paris at the age of 76 in 2012.
• Quotes [on Harvey Weinstein's considering excising the profanities from 'The King's Speech'] Harvey is a master of awards. He's a master of marketing. I do not believe this is one of his better ideas. It's not there for shock value or puerile interest. It is purely for therapeutic use. It's based on my own experience as a stutterer.

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David seidler, ‘the king’s speech’.

Having stuttered as a child, Seidler had little trouble connecting to the emotional turmoil suffered by King George VI. Bringing the little-known true story to the big screen was another matter.

By Lauren Schutte

Lauren Schutte

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David Seidler’s own stammering problem informed how he told King George VI’s story.

Having stuttered as a child growing up in England, first-time nominee David Seidler had little trouble connecting to the emotional turmoil suffered by King George VI and his private struggle to overcome a debilitating stammer. Bringing the little-known true story of a very public figure to the big screen, however, was another matter.

The Hollywood Reporter: Which of this year’s other Oscar-nominated films would you like to have written?

First, I have to say if you take the nine other nominees, there isn’t one script that I wouldn’t have been proud to put my name to: all exemplary work. The one that I would probably say I personally would like best to have written was Toy Story 3 , simply because I’m a sucker for that script. It’s very moving script, which is quite a marvelous accomplishment for animation. Harkening back to the first animated film I ever saw as a kid, which traumatized me for life, was Bambi . Bambi’s mother dies. That’s heartbreaking.

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THR: Many of this year’s Oscar-nominated scripts were written by more than one person. Did you feel pressure as the sole writer on King’s Speech ?

Yes. I was the only writer ever on the project. There was never even a whisper or a discussion of my being replaced or anybody else: I was the writer. To do that, of course, I had to deliver. In some of the stages, it was like back in college — I was doing all-nighters, working till 2, 3, 4 in the morning, e-mailing my stuff off to [director] Tom [Hooper] so he could read it when he woke up. Then he’d think about it, do his notes; I grabbed a little bit of sleep, and then he’d come over, we’d have a long session, he’d go off, and I’d start writing again. I knew if I stumbled there, good justification might call somebody else in, but I said, “Well, I just got to do this.”

THR: What were some of the biggest challenges you encountered during the writing process?

One of the things Tom Hooper and I worked on for a very long period was when I adapted the play version back into a screenplay version. Everybody was absolutely thrilled and delighted, and I got kudos. It made everything happen. I thought, “I’ve done my job; I’ve done the adaptation.” I was wrong. I hadn’t realized how deeply that process goes, that the two mediums – stage and screen – are so vastly different. Tom pointed out again and again elements in the screenplay that had a stage-y feel to them. What we both wanted to avoid at all costs was the sense of a filmed stage play because that never works out. Tom Stoppard directed his own version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, which is a brilliant play. He’s not a bad director, visually, but I thought the movie sucked because it looked like a filmed stage play; it filmed like it.

THR: Did the story undergo major metamorphoses from your early drafts to the final cut?

In my original version, Willie —the little boy who’s sent out by Logue to tell the Johnsons that they can come in — has a huge B-plot. Willie and Willie’s mother become an interwoven linking story. Obviously, Willie was based on myself; it was a way of writing my story. It really diffused the story badly. I had to get rid of it. That was the biggest major change. I had to kill myself. Almost. It was the right thing to do, no question.

THR: At what point do you consider your job “done” as screenwriter?

One of the most crucial times for a writer to be involved — and I’ve proved this over the years again and again by saving producers a lot of money – is during preproduction. That’s when you change your script. That’s when all the department heads report in and say, “Hey, you can’t do the ice-skating scene now because it’s the middle of August.” If the writer isn’t there, and if the director — or, God forbid, a producer starts making changes — they really don’t understand the ripple effect. They haven’t threaded all the threads and woven a tapestry, so when they pull on one string, they don’t realize it’s bunching up everything else. And the rehearsal, if you’re fortunate enough to have them — we had three weeks – and the first couple of weeks of filming. It’s good to be there just to give the actors a point of reference, somebody to ask questions about their character and their story if they’re unsure. You get a sense when the ship sails: They stop coming to you, they’re really just confabbing with the director, and the leads form a little clique; you’re not invited, and it’s time to go home.

THR: How would you describe the Oscar-nominee experience?

It’s a roller-coaster ride. It’s nonstop. It’s terrific, it’s great fun. Let’s put it this way: I’d much prefer to be doing it than not doing it. I sometimes feel like President Bush about the presidency when he said, “Being president is hard work.” Well, being a nominee is hard work.

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The King’s Speech writer David Seidler dead at 86

David Seidler , the screenwriter of the Oscar-winning film The King’s Speech, has passed away at the age of 86.

THR reports that he passed away Saturday while in New Zealand on a fly-fishing trip, according to his manager, Jeff Aghassi. No cause of death has been revealed.

The prolific writer was also known for Tucker: The Man and His Dream, a film by Francis Ford Coppola, the animated movie Madeline: Lost in Paris, and Quest for Camelot. Additionally, he penned The Queen of Spades and Onasis: The Richest Man in the World.

David Seidler and The King’s Speech

As for The King’s Speech, Seidler was inspired to work on the film due to the stutter he had as a child. The movie is about King George VI (played by Colin Firth), who overcame an extremely severe stutter with the help of a therapist, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). The speech that Logue ultimately helped with was a wartime message before World War 2.

The writer won an Oscar for original screenplay at the 2022 Academy Awards. The movie also won for Best Actor (Firth), Best Director (Tom Hooper), and Best Picture.

When he accepted the award, Seidler said, “My father always said to me I would be a late bloomer. I believe I’m the oldest person to win this award.”

Along with an Oscar, he won two BAFTAs and the Humanitas Prize for the film, Mirror reports .

David seems like the perfect fit for writing the screenplay. He started researching King George VI in 1981 when he learned of the Queen Mother tracking down a speech therapist.

Remarking on his own devastating stuttering, Seidler told the Stuttering Foundation that he had the condition from his third birthday to when he was 16.

“I had a huge trouble with the H sound, so when the telephone rang, I would break into a cold sweat because I couldn’t say hello,” he said.

The writer added, “I don’t know if school still works this way, but in those days you had set places, and the teacher worked up and down the rows. If I could see her working toward me and she was just going to miss me that day, I would fake sick the next day, so I didn’t have to go to school because it was so terrifying to be called upon. There came a period when I was actually excused from responding in class. I didn’t have to speak in class. It was that bad.”

As for his final destination, Aghassi said, “David was in the place he loved most in the world — New Zealand — doing what gave him the greatest peace which was fly-fishing. It is exactly as he would have scripted it if given the chance.”

David Seidler is survived by his children, Maya and Marc.

The post The King’s Speech writer David Seidler dead at 86 appeared first on ClutchPoints .

Middle East latest: Rockets fired towards US military base in Syria

At least five rockets are launched from the Iraqi town of Zummar towards a US military base in northeastern Syria, security sources tell Reuters. The attack against American forces is the first since February, when Iranian-backed groups in Iraq stopped targeting US troops.

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Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah said Iraqi armed groups had decided to resume attacks on US forces in the country.

They blamed the lack of progress in talks aimed at arranging the exit of American troops.

"What happened a short while ago is the beginning," the group said.

They were apparently referring to an earlier incident where at least five rockets were launched from the Iraqi town of Zummar towards a US military base in Syria.

Two security sources and a senior army officer said a rocket launcher fixed on the back of a small truck had been parked in the border town.

The military official said the truck caught fire with an explosion from unfired rockets as warplanes were in the sky.

The unnamed official said: "We can't confirm that the truck was bombed by US warplanes unless we investigate it."

Iraqi security forces are hunting for the perpetrators, who fled the area in another vehicle.

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Before the Hamas attack inside Israel on 7 October, the Lebanon border area was judged to have enjoyed a relative period of calm and stability.

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Here, our special correspondent Alex Crawford reports from the "Blue Line" in southern Lebanon...

At least five rockets have been fired from Iraq's town of Zummar towards a US military base in northeastern Syria, two Iraqi security sources have told Reuters.

The security sources and a senior army officer said a rocket launcher fixed on the back of a small truck had been parked in Zummar border town with Syria.

The military official said the truck caught fire with an explosion from unfired rockets at the same time as warplanes were in the sky.

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It comes a day after Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani returned from a visit to the US and met with President Joe Biden at the White House.

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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had a telephone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today and discussed the state of the region, a spokesperson for the German government has said.

"The chancellor emphasised that it was essential to avoid a regional escalation," the spokesperson said.

It comes as Iran and Israel, who have been locked in a shadow war for years, try to dial back tensions following a series of escalatory attacks between them as the Israel-Hamas war inflames the wider region.

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