David Seidler, Oscar-winning ‘The King’s Speech’ writer, dead at 86

Jordan Hoffman
·3 min read
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David Seidler, the London-born playwright and screenwriter best known for “The King’s Speech,” has died while on a fly-fishing vacation in New Zealand, as per a report in The Guardian. His spokesperson said he was in the location he most revered, doing the activity he most loved when he passed: “It is exactly as he would have scripted it.” The winner of the Academy Award and BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay for the Colin Firth-led film was 86 years old. 

Seidler’s career began in Australian television in the late 1960s. He came to the United States in the early 1980s, working for the soap opera “Another World,” then writing television movies like “Malice in Wonderland,” something of an early version of the series “Feud” as it concerned Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons starring Jane Alexander and Elizabeth Taylor. He also wrote “Onassis: The Richest Man in the World” starring Raul Julia as Aristotle Onassis and Jane Seymour as Maria Callas. His first feature film was Francis Ford Coppola’s “Tucker: The Man and His Dream” starring Jeff Bridges.

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Despite being a really good movie, it didn’t quite connect with the box office, and Seilder returned to TV work, where he stayed quite busy. His most notable project was “Come On, Get Happy,” a drama about “The Partridge Family.” He also wrote animated features and Hallmark dramas when network Movies of the Week became a rarity. Much of this work was written in tandem with Jacqueline Feather, a New Zealander who also works as a Jungian psychotherapist. 

Seidler’s career took a turn toward prestige features with the original screenplay “The King’s Speech,” directed by Tom Hooper. In addition to Firth, it co-starred Helena Bonham Carter, Geoffrey Rush, Guy Pearce, Timothy Spall, Derek Jacobi, Jennifer Ehle, and Michael Gambon and detailed the struggles King George VI had with stuttering, culminating with his nation-healing first radio address during WWII. (Yes, the title is a pun.)

The film won the Oscar not just for Original Screenplay, but Best Actor for Firth, Best Director for Hooper, and Best Picture for producers Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, and Gareth Unwin.

Following the film’s success, Seidler adapted it into a stage production that opened in Britain’s West End in 2012 and has been adapted to “over a half-dozen languages” and performed all over the world. His only credited film work after “The King’s Speech” appears to be one of several co-writers on a Russian co-production called “Queen of Spades,” a thriller loosely adapted from a Tchaikovsky opera. 

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