Entertainment
Joanna Lumley recalls babbling to the Queen about legalising drugs over ‘terrifying’ lunch
Joanna Lumley admits she was surprisingly terrified when she first met the Queen (Picture: REX/PA/GETTY}
Joanna Lumley is all of us when she admitted being ‘absolutely terrified’ when she first met the Queen.
The fear was so real, that the actress and author explained she tuned out when it came to adequate topics of conversation and decided to strike up chit-chat about legalising drugs (surely not on the pre-approved list of Royal conversations).
Joanna shared that she had met multiple members of the Royal Family on many occasions but was still stumped when it came to thinking of what she might say, adding that she could ‘never’ think of anything truly appropriate.
This particular meeting, she said, resulted in her turning ‘rather dim’ and as a result, the conversation didn’t flow in the direction she thought it would.
‘The Queen is suddenly a different dimension… and when she looks at you her eyes are so blue, and so you have that shock and you immediately start being rather dim and rather babbly,’ she explained.
‘I went to one of the lunches at Buckingham Palace, and she said “tell me what you’re doing nowadays” and I said I’m very concerned about legalising drugs,’ she recalled. ‘I mean what happened to me, as if she would care, she had no interest in it.’
Joanna Lumley said the Queen let her ‘babble’ about legalising drugs (Picture: REX/PA/GETTY)
Ever a trooper, she said the Queen simply listened politely.
‘Anyway, she let me babble on for a little bit because she is very good at listening to people.’
Speaking on The Andrew Marr Show, the former model, 75, was detailing her new book, naturally about the monarch, A Queen For All Seasons, and revealed the ‘terror’ of meeting Her Majesty face-to-face, despite her known friendly disposition.
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‘It’s extremely terrifying, for some reason. Even the people who say… oh you’ll love it, she’s so friendly,’ she continued. ‘You have an electric shock because somebody so familiar is suddenly in front of you.’
Joanna is known for her friendships within the Royal Family, namely Prince Charles, and recently she lashed out at Netflix’s hit series The Crown in a recent interview over their depictions – and it wasn’t the first time she had done so either.
Joanna Lumley has called The Crown ‘laughable’ (Picture) AP/GETTY/REX/PA/NETFLIX
‘I know them, so I know it’s all made up and it’s rubbish. All the poor actors who are doing their best to copy them, it’s awful,’ she told Australian Women’s Weekly magazine, according to The Mirror.
‘Imagine somebody making up conversations they think you’ve had,’ the Absolutely Fabulous star said.
‘It’s so laughable. They’ve used real people, whom they’ve copied, and then made up all the conversations. It’s insane.’
She added she found it ‘awful’ that some people who watch it may not be aware that it’s ‘made up’.
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