While many appeared in skits pretending to be Queen Elizabeth II, there were two rare occasions where she insisted on being in on the fun as herself: In the 2012 Olympic James Bond sketch and the recent tea time scene with Paddington Bear for the Platinum Jubilee.
In the wake of Queen Elizabeth’s death, screenwriter and children’s author Frank Cottrell-Boyce shares that it was the late monarch’s own idea to participate in the closing scene for the London Olympics opening ceremony alongside Daniel Craig as James Bond.
Cottrell-Boyce—who wrote the 2012 Olympics ceremony—says a member of the team was sent to Buckingham Palace in order to take photos of Queen Elizabeth’s ceremony outfit and other images for set building when they were told she wanted to star in the skit herself.
“The queen’s dresser said, ‘Why are you doing all this?’ And we told her, ‘so we can make it look like the queen.’ So she said: ‘Oh, the queen wants to do it,’” he explains to THR. “She put herself up for that, she wanted to be in the sketch.”
In the scene, she says “Good evening, Mister Bond.” This line was another idea of hers. “On the day we were filming, she said to Danny Boyle, ‘I think I should have a line,’” he adds. “She bagged that. She didn’t have a line in the script.”
Back in June, she also shared a tea time scene with national darling Paddington Bear, where the two bonded over their love of marmalade sandwiches.
“She had a lot more lines in the Paddington sketch, partly because it was a lot cheaper to film her than to film Paddington,” Cottrell-Boyce says. “But she did that brilliantly and with evident enjoyment. And it wasn’t easy. Paddington’s not really there, so it’s technically an amazing performance and a brilliantly timed comic performance.”
Paddington Bear shared a message in honor of Queen Elizabeth’s death yesterday, paying homage to their shared scene together.
In the skit, Padding tells the late Queen Elizabeth, “Happy Jubilee Ma’am. And thank you. For everything.” She replies, “That’s very kind.”
Following the announcement of her death, the Paddington Bear Twitter account wrote, “Thank you Ma’am, for everything.”