Royal family 'are like aliens', says Helen Mirren 

Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II in a promotional photo for the 2013 production of The Audience. Photograph: Johan Persson/AP

Dame Helen Mirren has described the Royal family as being like “aliens” who live in a world “so beyond our understanding”. The award-winning British actress is reprising her role as the Queen for a Broadway run of The Audience, a play that had a successful run in the West End in 2013. Mirren won a best actress Oscar in 2007 for her portrayal of Elizabeth II in film The Queen.

“The world they live in is so beyond our understanding,” she told the New York Times in an interview to promote the play. “You’ve never queued for anything. Ever, for anything. Every time you go in the street, the traffic is stopped for you. It’s a world you can’t imagine. They are, in a way, aliens. But inside that, they are the same flawed, insecure, vulnerable, complicated human beings we are. It’s my job to get into the person who’s inside that world.”

The Audience is based on the private weekly meeting between the monarch and prime minister, and shows the Queen in conversation with eight of the 12 leaders who have served during her reign. It is written by Peter Morgan, the man behind film The Queen, and previews this weekend.

Mirren, 69, described herself as a “Queenist” in the interview, who still has “major question marks” about the monarchy in general. She said that the public view of the Queen isn’t correct. “I think people misunderstand because she doesn’t smile all the time,” she said. “But she’s not a movie star; she’s a queen. Smiling is not a requirement. What’s required is to be dignified. To be almost iconic, and self-controlled. Not to be charming.”

It is Mirren’s third appearance on Broadway, and her first since appearing in Dance of Death alongside Ian McKellen in 2001.

She said she would have liked to have seen the Queen in the audience during the play’s West End run. “I wish the Queen had come to see the play, but it would have been impossible. When I took my bow at the end, they were not applauding me. They were applauding the Queen,” she said.

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