David Seidler, screenwriter of 'The King's Speech', dies at 86

David Seidler, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of the acclaimed 2010 drama “The King's Speech,” has died. He was 86 years old.

Seidler's manager, Jeff Aghassi, told the Times that Seidler died Saturday while fly fishing in New Zealand. No specific cause of death was given, but Aghassi said: “David was in the place he loved most in the world, New Zealand, doing what gave him the most peace: fly fishing. If he had the chance, it is exactly how he would have written it.”

“The King's Speech” swept the top Oscar categories in 2011, earning Seidler the original screenplay award; The film was also named best picture, with Tom Hooper winning in the directing category and Colin Firth winning lead actor.

“The King's Speech” is based on the true story of King George VI of Great Britain (played by Firth), who struggled with a severe stutter throughout his life and was helped by Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) before his first national radio address after the start of World War II.

“Before the invention of the radio, it was enough for them to be those supreme, remote figures, who could be seen in the distance, above the heads of thousands of people, and who had large feathers on their heads to know who the king was. , Seidler told The Times in 2010. “As a common man, you never heard the king speak. And then, suddenly, you not only heard him speak, but you heard him in your living room, in the privacy of your home, where you could comment rudely about him. Big difference.”

Seidler himself overcame a childhood stutter, an experience he drew on to create a empathetic portrait of George VI as he faces the monumental task of public speaking at a dangerous time for his country.

“You know, I couldn't have written this story when I was 33,” he told The Times in 2011. “Life throws up all kinds of terrible obstacles and only later do you realize that they're actually all for the best. I felt crushed when [George VI’s widow, Queen Elizabeth] The Queen Mother told me not to write this while she was alive. But I wasn't ready. To tell the story correctly, I had to immerse myself again in the experience of being a stutterer. That meant returning to the pain and isolation I knew as a child. And I know inside that I couldn't have done that when I was younger. “It wasn’t ready until now.”

Seidler, who was born in 1937 in Britain, moved to the United States in the early days of World War II. He attended Cornell University, where he was friends with writer Thomas Pynchon. His early work in entertainment included writing dubs for translations of Japanese monster movies, and he broke into television with the 1960s series “Adventures of the Seaspray.”

Before “The King's Speech,” Seidler had an up-and-down film career, including 1988's “Tucker: The Man and His Dream,” about automobile designer Preston Tucker, directed by his former high school classmate Francis Ford Coppola.

However, the two had a bitter falling out after the film and Seidler returned to his television career, which included the 1999 animated children's film “Madeline: Lost in Paris.” Before that, she had written biopic-style TV movies such as 1985's “Malice in Wonderland,” starring Elizabeth Taylor as Louella Parsons, and 1988's “Onassis: the Richest Man in the World.”

He survived a cancer scare in the early 2000s that pushed him to finally tackle his lifelong dream of writing the screenplay that became “The King's Speech.”

“I felt very sorry for myself, but then I pulled myself together and went to work,” he told The Times. “I said to myself, 'David, if you're not going to write Bertie's story now, when exactly are you going to do it?' “

More recently, a stage version of “The King's Speech” was a hit in London's West End and was scheduled to debut on Broadway before the pandemic hit in 2020. According to Aghassi, Seidler “had multiple projects in active development, including documentaries, limited series and feature films.”

Seidler is survived by two adult children, Maya and Marc.