Helen Mirren, who once said “fuck Netflix”, almost reprised her most famous role for Netflix
Helen Mirren has watched the film industry change dramatically since she began acting in the 1960s, making a splash in the 1969 drama Age of Consent while balancing an already successful career as a theatre star.
Well-versed in the world of Shakespeare, Mirren has carried these skills into an impressive career, which has seen her play everyone from troubled wives who engage in erotic affairs to Queen Elizabeth II.
The latter rather unsurprisingly won Mirren an Oscar for ‘Best Actress’, with her leading role in Stephen Frears’ The Queen garnering plenty of acclaim. It’s the kind of role you know is going to attract considerable Oscars buzz, but Mirren wasn’t merely Oscar-baiting here – she really embodied the part incredibly well, shapeshifting into this regal vision of power.
Undergoing plenty of vocal training so that she had the part nailed, Mirren was so convincing that watching the film really does feel like we’re peeling back the curtain on such an elusive figure. “At the time, it had never been done before, playing the queen. It was quite nerve-racking because I didn’t know—no one knew—how the public would receive it, let alone the establishment in Britain,” she told The Hollywood Reporter.
Adding, “But I got the sense that it had been seen and that it had been appreciated. I’ve never heard directly, and I never will.”
Since then, the monarch has been portrayed in various other forms of media, notably The Crown, which was also penned by the writer of The Queen, Peter Morgan. Tracking her reign across the years, Claire Foy played the youngest version of the queen, before Olivia Colman took over the role to depict her in middle age. Eventually, it was time to cast the older version of Elizabeth, and Morgan had one person in mind.
Of course, he asked Mirren, who had not only played the role in The Queen, but in his play The Audience, too. He knew that there was a slim chance of Mirren accepting the role for a third time, but it was certainly worth asking. What’s more, Mirren has famously slagged off Netflix, the platform that is home to The Crown, with the actor once saying at CinemaCon, “I love Netflix, but fuck Netflix. There is nothing like sitting in the cinema.”
So, was Mirren going to go back on what she’d said and step into the royal role a third time? After some contemplation, she ultimately turned it down, allowing Imelda Staunton to portray Lizzie instead. Still, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos once revealed to Variety that he was always hopeful that Mirren would play the part. He explained that, after bumping into her, he said, “‘You know, it’s inevitable that you’re coming back to do this, right?’ And we all laughed about it.”
Mirren thought (via The New York Times) that it would be “good to have someone different” in the role, though. So, Staunton excellently took on the demanding part while Mirren went off to do other things, which eventually included the Netflix movie The Thursday Murder Club. I guess her principles have changed.
