Emma Thompson to play the Queen in new drama recreating famous Buckingham Palace intruder
By Paul Revoir
Last updated at 9:37 AM on 24th February 2012
Emma Thompson is to follow in the footsteps of Helen Mirren and play the Queen in a new TV drama based on the famous case of Buckingham Palace intruder Michael Fagan.
Miss Thompson, 52, will recreate the scenes where the monarch was confronted in her bedroom by the man, in the biggest royal security breach in the 20th century.
Mr Fagan had scaled the 14ft wall of Buckingham Palace before wandering into her royal quarters while she was asleep in 1982.
A new monarch: Emma Thompson will portray the Queen in a new drama based on the famous Buckingham Palace intruder
Alarmed: In the TV drama Walking The Dogs, Thompson portays the Queen awoken in her bedroom by an intruder
The Queen was famously said to have spent ten minutes talking to him after he pulled back the curtains on her four-poster bed.
The incident has been adapted for a film called Walking The Dogs, to be screened by Sky Arts in the spring.
It also features Eddie Marsan - whose roles have included menacing parts in Happy-Go-Lucky and Tyrannosaur - as Fagan.
In Sky's drama the Queen and the intruder are shown discussing love, family and personal freedom before the police arrive and take him away.
Intruder: Eddie Marsan will play Michael Fagan, who broke into the Queen's bedroom in 1982
Fagan, who was 31 at the time, was initially charged with the theft of some wine from the palace but the charges were later dropped and he went on to be detained for several months in a psychiatric hospital.
His encounter with the Queen was actually his second visit to the royal household, after previously scaling a drainpipe and scouting round the corridors before leaving.
Only recently Fagan spoke for the first time in years about that infamous night.
Speaking to the Independent on Sunday, he disputed the suggestion she had held a long conversation with him before guards were summoned.
Biscuit? Fagan disputes the version of events that the film will recount, that the Queen spent ten minutes talking to him before guards arrived
He said: 'Nah! She went past me and ran out of the room, her little bare feet running across the floor.' In the drama Russell Tovey plays a footman who had been walking the royal corgis instead of guarding the bedroom in the film, part of a new series of comedies and dramas called Playhouse Presents.
The Queen engaged Fagan - who was bleeding after he broke an ashtray - in conversation until help arrived.
As part of the Sky Arts series of dramas Sir Tom Jones will make his acting debut.
The It's Not Unusual singer will star alongside Alison Steadman and Brenda Blethyn in the film, King Of The Teds.
Royal role: Thompson follows in the footsteps of Helen Mirren to take on the part
The 71-year-old plays Ron, a former bottle factory worker who was once the top Teddy Boy in his area as a youth. He and his wife Tina find their lives turned upside down when they once again meet a friend from their early days.
The Welsh singing star previously took a brief cameo role in Tim Burton's comedy Mars Attacks, playing himself.
The new film is part of a Sky Arts series called Playhouse Presents ... which also features one-off dramas with star names. This Is Spinal Tap star Harry Shearer will play Richard Nixon in one film, while David Tennant will appear in another scripted by novelist Will Self.
And Paul O'Grady has written his first screenplay - in which he also stars, alongside Sheila Hancock - called Nellie And Melba.
Geraldine James, Richard E Grant and Trevor Eve star in a further film in the series called The Other Woman.
