Judi Dench is once again the Dame of Thrones in Victoria & Abdul

SHE’s playing Queen Victoria on film again, but veteran actor Dame Judi Dench has revealed why she has no desire to be real-life royalty.

TWENTY years after playing Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown, you’re wearing her crown again in Victoria & Abdul — the true story of Victoria’s unlikely friendship with a young Indian clerk in the final years of her life. Did it feel like revisiting an old friend?

Well yes, a bit. An old friend that I perhaps thought I knew most things about, but obviously didn’t know quite this amount. And nor of course has anyone else, because everything, after Abdul moved, was destroyed on (Victoria’s son) Bertie’s orders. So these letters were found in India and it’s only recently that everything’s come to light.

VICTORIA & ABDUL REVIEW: Dench reigns again

History books remember Victoria as something of a monster, but in these films we find empathy for her. Do you feel you’re rehabilitating Victoria’s public image?

Yes. There’s a very human heart and a great need in her for not only affection but just the relaxation of being able to talk to somebody without having everything censored and without the formality of the court round her.

Judi Dench as Queen Victoria, with Billy Connolly as John Brown, in the 1997 film Mrs Brown. Picture: Supplied

Now, Dench revisits the Queen later in life in Victoria & Abdul, with Ali Fazal as Abdul. Picture: Universal Pictures

In Victoria & Abdul, the Queen says “we’re all prisoners”. Does royalty strike you as being a gilded cage?

I think it must be. Having your life mapped out for you day after day after day. With so many commitments to so many things, to have to be on the ball about it ... that must be a very, very difficult thing to have to face every day, every week, every month, every year.

So you’ll stick with being a Dame? Not looking for an upgrade?

Not looking for an upgrade, no (laughing). I don’t know where I would go!

Dench sharing a laugh with our current monarch, Queen Elizabeth, at Buckingham Palace in 2011. Picture: Yui Mok/Getty Images

Director Stephen Frears says you are “adored and trusted by everyone, including the current Queen”. Does he know something we don’t — does Queen Elizabeth’s fandom stretch beyond bestowing the title of Dame upon you?

Don’t believe a word he says. He either says a lot of things like that or he says nothing at all. At the end of a take, he might just walk away. Sometimes he says, ‘Do you want to do it again?’ and I know well what that means. That means he wants to do it again. This is my fifth time with Stephen and we’ve got a shorthand and that’s glorious.

Fazal, Dench and director Stephen Frears on the set of Victoria & Abdul in Scotland. Picture: Universal Pictures

Your co-star Eddie Izzard claims there’s still a teenage girl inside of you. Is he right?

That’s lovely that he should say that. I’m the most massive fan of Eddie’s comedy. We — my husband when he was alive and Finty, my daughter, and I — have been to every one of the shows he’s done. He’s a real hero in our house. So that’s very nice that he said that. Teenage girl? Well, I hope so. I didn’t sleep very well last night so there’s not much teenage girl left in me this morning (laughs).

Victoria’s face lights up when Abdul is around. Did you have to fake that with Bollywood star Ali Fazal, who plays Abdul?

Well, all acting is faking it (laughs). But what is lovely is if there’s a chemistry between you, it gives you all sorts of shortcuts. With Ali, it was an instant thing of getting on. Really instant. He’s absolutely charming and funny. Just a really marvellous friend you like to be with. We worked a lot on the Urdu, so that was a constant form of delight. What could be better?

The real Queen Victoria with her Munshi, Abdul Karim, in the 1890s. Picture: Supplied

Co-star — and Dench’s hero — Eddie Izzard as Bertie, the Prince of Wales. Picture: Universal Pictures

In the letters between the pair, Victoria was sometimes motherly, other times more like a young lover. Did you play the relationship in the movie as a romance?

It is what it is. She in her 80s, he in his 20s, it must have been everything. Everything that would get her out of that awful place she was in of feeling lonely, all her friends dying and not much to look forward to. Everything affectionate that, since John Brown died, she had closed up inside her, with no way of expressing. No way of expressing delight at learning something new or delight in looking at somebody who she obviously thought was very beautiful — and why ever not, when you look at Ali? So that’s like a rebirth, a regeneration.

The Queen and an Indian clerk strike up an unlikely friendship in Victoria & Abdul. Getting on was “an instant thing” for co-stars Dench and Fazal. Picture: Universal Pictures

The movie shot on the Isle of Wight, in Victoria’s holiday home Osborne House. It sounds as though the cast had a school holiday camp vibe going on that island.

It was school camp! I remember I once went to a premiere and a friend of mine walked in and I said, ‘Hello! What are you doing here?’ He said, ‘I’m in the film’. We hadn’t had any scenes together so you kind of don’t know. But in this case, because we were all at the Isle of Wight, all in the same hotel in the evening, it was just a question of doing the day’s work, going back, having a drink, quietly talking, then seeing everybody for breakfast the next morning. We had three weeks of that.

You were Oscar nominated for Mrs Brown, so obviously quite adept at walking in Victoria’s shoes. But filming at Osborne must have taken it to another level.

We were very lucky to be at Osborne; nobody’s been allowed to film there before now. If she’s sitting in her drawing room writing letters, I was actually sitting in that room, at that table. It was a marvellous help. It does quite a lot of the homework for you.

Dench with fellow Royal Shakespeare Company actors (from left) Donald Sinden, Barrie Ingham and Bill Fraser at Adelaide Airport in March 1970. Picture: News Corp Australia

In 1969-70, you toured Australia with the Royal Shakespeare Company. What do you remember of that tour?

Well, we had a rather tragic thing happen to us there, actually. One of our company (Charles Thomas) died, and we were all feeling very shaken. Michael Williams flew out as a surprise to see us and try to cheer us up. And he asked me to marry him. I said, ‘I can’t possibly give you an answer until we’re in a rainy day in Battersea’. Because it was glorious, it was absolutely beautiful (in Australia) and that’s no good (laughs).

You had to put the relationship to the rainy, grey, everyday life in England test?

Quite. So he did. And I did. So all that was good.

We’ll see you next in Ken Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express, co-starring Derek Jacobi, Olivia Colman, Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Josh Gad, Daisy Ridley and so on. That looks a marvellous ensemble to have been a part of.

It certainly was. Hugely good fun. And whereas I was in almost every shot in Victoria & Abdul, I was in very few shots — I just had a nice couple of dogs to deal with and a lot of jewels to wear. Oh God, it’s a hard life.

VICTORIA & ABDUL OPENS TODAY

Dench as Princess Dragomiroff in Kenneth Branagh’s new take on Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. Olivia Colman (left), plays her maid, Hildegarde. Picture: Twentieth Century Fox

Originally published as Judi Dench is once again the Dame of Thrones in Victoria & Abdul