One of the most magnificent affirmations to emerge from all the tribute pouring in for Queen Elizabeth II is the constant reminder of her quietly irrepressible humour. This morning, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson revealed her “innocent joy” at hearing about the reactions to her top secret James Bond sketch, including appearing to jump out of a helicopter and paraglide down into the Olympic Stadium in her glittering pink dress. Craig, of course, was part of the secret from the start and described how utterly terrified he was.
When he was told it was happening, the actor admitted to Zoe Ball on Radio One that his first response was: “‘You’re out of your mind!’
“Next thing you know, I’m literally on the way to Buckingham Palace in a tuxedo… Her Majesty’s there. Danny’s giving her notes, ‘Your Majesty, could you possibly…’, and she’s improvising a bit. She literally kind of said ‘Would you like me to pretend to be writing?’, he’s like ‘Yes, yes that’s great.’ So she acted a bit. That was all her own stuff. It was amazing.”
And of course, there were corgis…
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Craig added: “She was great. Calmer than me. My heart’s going ‘dum dum dum dum’, (I’m thinking to myself) ‘Ok, keep it together, keep it together.’
“And there’s literally corgis tripping you up, there’s like five corgis. If you put it in The Crown, you’d think it was rubbish, they would be like ‘Nah, it’s not real.’ Footmen with corgis, you know. I was rolling round on the floor with the corgis at one point in the Palace.”
What most people were dumbstruck by were the scenes of The Queen apparently parachuting down to the Olympic Stadium, with decades of experience, shooting a few scenes with improv would have been a breeze for the merry monarch.
WATCH THE FULL SCENE NEXT:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/1AS-dCdYZbo
It wasn’t the first time Craig had been with Her Majesty – and he was possibly even more terrified.
Years before he prowled through Buckingham Palace to pick up Her Majesty for a date (and a spot of sky-diving) at the 2012 London Olympics, the actor spent another intense evening with our sovereign.
Back in 2005 he was still relatively unknown, but found himself sat with The Queen on the most important night of his life.
On top of being extremely worried about how his first 007 film, Casino Royale, would be received, he watched it for the first time with a cinema audience, sat in a box with The Queen, “as you do.”
Craig said: “It was surreal anyway sitting next to the Queen. So it was like, you know, and I hadn’t had a drink and I was like just sort of shaking.”
Luckily, the response on the night was immediately ecstatic and the actor remembers his overwhelming relief.
Craig said: “We got to the opening credits after the fight in the bathroom and everybody burst into applause and shouted, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, it might work.’ It was just, it was beyond… and I thought, ‘Oh OK, we might make this work, we might make this work.’
17 years later, the star joined in the outpouring of tribute to the Queen: “I, like so many, was deeply saddened by the news today and my thoughts are with the royal family, those she loved and all those who loved her. She leaves an incomparable legacy and will be profoundly missed.”
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