"In Geoffrey Rush's hands Lionel is an outlandish eccentric, a kind of Aussie Henry Higgins who thinks nothing of telling a prince to speak with him on a first-name basis and pay up on lost bets with cold, hard cash (which royals never carry).
That's a huge etiquette no-no when you're dealing with monarchs. But Lionel doesn't care.
He's audacious. He's irrepressible. He throws stodgy traditions into the dumpster.
... "Lionel and Albert are the unlikeliest of friends," says Rush.
"One's a commoner. One's a royal. One man's dad is a brewer. The other guy's father is a king. How could you possibly make that work? But they do. That's clear in the diaries that do exist," he says.
"Lionel's like this wonderful, impassioned conductor," says Hooper. "He reaches in deep with his commoner's hands and pulls out the king that has been hiding underneath all of Albert's fears for years."
In that pursuit Lionel never yields, even when he's faced with protestations from his star pupil and his royal courtiers. 
"We all have stuff playing in our heads, stuff that holds us back from who we could become," says Rush.
"This, really, is a story about liberation through friendship," he says. "What a wonderful, powerful force that is."
Q.
Why did you think Tom Hooper was the right choice as director?A. I knew from his work on (the PBS series) John Adams that he had a real gift with the camera for making history seem real, which was the most important thing to this intimate story. We didn’t need someone who’d be seduced by all the pomp and pageantry.
Q.
Was the fact that your character was an Australian part of the appeal for you?A. Yes, but not just out of any jingoism. What I appreciated was the fact that the script delved into how Australians were — and still are — condescended to by the English. This film may take place in the 1930s, but nearly 50 years later, my Australian wife (Jane Menelaus) was studying in London at the Central School for Speech and Drama. One day, she pronounced the word “nude” as “nood” and her teacher said “It’s ‘nyude,’ you common little colonial.”
"Twenty years earlier," explained Hooper, "being king was still a visual thing. As long as you looked good on a horse or you could wave from a carriage or wave from a balcony and look fine, you could fulfill the ceremonial roles."
"Suddenly (Bertie) was facing being king at a moment when you had to speak publicly on the radio to the 58 countries of the British Empire, which represented one quarter of the world's population," he said.
"So many people looked to the king for a performance that would emotionally connect and on top of that you had the Second World War coming."
On the one hand, people heard Adolf Hitler give "brilliant, fiery, fluent articulate" speeches while the king of England was "struggling to speak at all."
The period was "a fascinating moment when you chart the way mass media has transformed institutions like the monarchy... and the way leadership has to operate."
"You know, if he’d been born just a bit earlier or just a bit later, none of this would have happened to him. A decade before, no one spoke on the radio, and a decade after, they’d learned how to edit and pre-record. But during the crucible of George’s time on the throne, you had to speak live and you had to be persuasive.
“His two greatest political enemies, Hitler and Mussolini, were wonders at using the medium and hypnotizing the masses. It must have been a devastating prospect.”
Tom Hooper mentioned how he hoped the royal family would approve of the film: "
I would hate the idea that in any sense she was upset with any aspect of the representation. I think to be honest we came to the subject with an open mind and I think both Colin and I rather fell for him. I think you can see that love for the character in the movie."[pics thanks to ladybluelake]
Happy reunion on the red carpet at the Oscars
