OntheBox THE QUEEN Sunday 9pm, Channel 4 WILL Her Majesty be amused? It's time to start practising your curtsey as not one but five leading British stars prepare to step into the royal shoes to play Queen Elizabeth II at key moments in her life. Channel 4's drama documentary series The Queen begins on Sunday and mixes dramatised scenes from behind palace doors with news archive and testimony from royal insiders.
Entertainment writer MARION McMULLEN looks at the women taking on the royal mantle. SILENT WITNESS actress Emilia Fox leads the line up in the opening film fake Watch Replica set in 1955 as Princess Margaret's affair with Group Captain Peter Townsend exploded into public view at the time of the coronation. "I realised playing her she's an extraordinary figure in our history," says Emilia. "I found it fascinating seeing the private side of her versus the public side of her. "I was so thrilled to be asked that I accepted immediately, and only then began to realise just what a challenge it was. "It's very difficult to mimic the Queen, because it sounds like you're doing a parody of herFrom PAGE 19 BEGINNING her early career at Coventry's Belgrade Theatre Samantha Bond also worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company. But she is best known as Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond films. She plays the Queen during the early 1970s, when the monarchy was practically bankrupt and civil unrest and recession were all rampant. "It is daunting playing the Queen," says Samantha, "mainly because you're trying to make her a three-dimensional person - which I've absolutely no doubt that the Queen is, it's just we've never seen that side of her. "Her life is on such public display that when you want to be private, you would cherish that desperately, I would imagine. So it was trying to imagine what the Queen would be like within her own four walls - however large those four walls may be." "I have to tell you, it's not a good part for your vanity. Normally one gets into a make up room early in the morning and they try and make you look lovely. "The Queen wears very little make up except bright red lipstick, and that's not an easy look to pull off. "I don't look like the Queen, but you then put the wig on, and the hairstyle is so distinctive that it made me gasp a little bit. "Then you put on the most sensible clothes you've ever worn in your life. "She's also got a very different way of standing. Her feet always seem very firmly rooted in the ground, it's a very sensible stance. And she walks differently. I found all of that very interesting." SUSAN JAMESON appears with her husband James Bolam in BBC 1's New Tricks and plays the monarch during the Thatcher years. "I was recording a rad play with Mark Heap about aliens, and then two days later I was down in freezing Dorset playing the Queen," she says. " It wasn't until a couple of days later it sank in what I was doing - then it became very frightening." She laughs: "I also started to become a little bit more regal Valencia Soccer Jersey Wholesale as I got into the role. I hope I wasn't bossing anyone around, but as time went on, I found myself thinking 'I would really like a cup of tea, and someone really ought to get one for me.'" COVENTRY'S Belgrade Theatre was another happy acting ground for Barbara Flynn. She has also appeared in Cracker, A Very Peculiar Practice written by Kenilworth's Andrew Davies and the Beiderbecke series. She plays the Queen during 1992, the year she memorably termed her annus horriblis. "This is 1992. The beginning of Charles and Diana's difficulties, the exposure of Camilla's relationship, Andrew's divorce, the terrible Windsor fire, the issue of her paying taxes," points out Barbara. "And it was the beginning of the breakdown of the consensus of respect for the royal family. It was a terrible year for her." Barbara didn't have long to pr
