TRIGGER WARNING: This article contains references to an individual's death.
David Seidler, who won an Oscar for his screenplay on The King's Speech, is no more. He died at the age of 86. According to The Guardian, the British author passed away on Saturday while fly-fishing in New Zealand.
David Seidler's manager releases a statement
In a statement, his longtime manager Jeff Aghassi said, "David was in the place he loved most in the world — New Zealand — doing what gave him the greatest peace which was fly-fishing. If given the chance, it is exactly as he would have scripted it.”
For his work on Tom Hooper's 2010 film The King's Speech, which starred Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter, and Geoffrey Rush, Seidler was awarded the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
The movie's stage version, which debuted in the West End in 2012, was also overseen by Seidler. The screenwriter, who was born in London and experienced a stammer as a child, was motivated to write about the real-life account of King George VI's recovery from his speech impairment through the assistance of a speech and language therapist.
Who was David Seidler?
Seidler was born August 4, 1937, in London, and grew up there. On August 4, 1937, Seidler was born in London, where he also spent his early years. At the age of 40, Seidler moved to Hollywood and got his first job writing Tucker: The Man and His Dream for Francis Ford Coppola. He wrote alongside Jacqueline Feather as part of the Feather & Seidler partnership for a while.
Being a stutterer himself, Seidler had always wanted to write about George VI and had begun his research in the 1970s. In 1981, Valentine Logue, a brain surgeon, wrote to Lionel Logue after locating his surviving son. Logue, for his part, was eager to speak with Seidler and even to pass along the journals his father had kept during the King's treatment, but only if he was granted "written permission from the Queen Mother" beforehand.
Seidler wrote to her and her private secretary replied, requesting that he not take up the project while she was alive. Seidler gave up on the project as a result in 1982. Although Seidler suffered from throat cancer in 2005, he did not begin work on the project until after the Queen Mother passed away in 2002.