Paddington Sketch Writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce Says the Queen Loved Acting, Reflects on Her Majesty’s Cameo: ‘It Was a Brilliantly-Timed Comic Performance’

variety.com:

K.J. Yossman Frank Cottrell Boyce, who co-wrote two of Queen Elizabeth II’s most iconic on-screen cameos – at the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony with Daniel Craig and this year’s Jubilee sketch with Paddington Bear – said the monarch had “brilliant” comic timing and could have been an actor. “She’s absolutely glowing in that moment,” he said of her appearance alongside Paddington in the 2-minute long sketch, which commenced her Platinum Jubilee celebrations in July. “And you’ve got to remember that that’s real acting that’s going on there.

Paddington isn’t really in the room. She’s acting with an eye-line and with someone pretending to be Paddington. That’s proper acting going on.

But I also think it’s true happiness.” Cottrell Boyce made the comments during an appearance on BBC breakfast news on Friday morning, following news of the Queen’s death on Thursday.

As he paid tribute to her acting skills, BBC host Naga Munchetty mentioned that one of the Queen’s friends, Gyles Brandreth, thought she had always secretly harbored dreams of being an actor. “I think she had it in her, don’t you?” Munchetty said, to which Cottrell Boyce replied “Oh definitely.” He also revealed that for the 2012 Olympics sketch, in which the Queen appeared to jump out of a helicopter alongside James Bond, she specifically requested to have a line from director Danny Boyle. “On the day that we were filming, she said to Danny Boyle, ‘I think I think I should have a line.’ So she bagged that line, there wasn’t a line in the script – she improv’d,” Cottrell Boyce recalled.