While 10-year-old Oliver Burton didn’t get to meet Queen Elizabeth II as he hoped, he got the next best thing - the actress who has won countless awards for playing the Queen, Dame Helen Mirren. The actress, who has been playing the role on the stage in The Audience, dressed as Queen Elizabeth to meet Oliver and have a cup of tea with him.
According to The Daily Mail, Oliver is fighting his third battle with cancer and always hoped to meet the Queen. However, she said she couldn’t make it and Mirren went instead. Mirren invited him and his mother to see The Audience and go backstage. There, Mirren showed him her corgis and had a butler serve tea.
“She stayed in character for the whole thing. Oliver thought she was the real Queen, and well, that's good enough for us,” Oliver’s father, James Browne, told the Mail. “She was really lovely. She did the whole thing - had a butler there, was dressed in costume and did it all properly for him.”
Oliver, who has downs syndrome and was first diagnosed with leukemia when he was only 3, got to play with the corgis and sat in Mirren’s big chair while Mirren used his wheelchair. She even ‘knighted’ him and said that he will be called “Sir Oliver” from now on.
The National Children's Tumour Leukaemia Cancer Trust arranged the meeting, which took place just weeks after Mirren made headlines for yelling at performers for interrupting her stage show.
“To be honest we had heard about her shouting and swearing at those drummers and we were a bit worried she would be quite stern, but she really was lovely,” Browne said.
Mirren won an Oscar for playing Queen Elizabeth in The Queen and an Olivier Award for The Audience.
image: Wikimeida Commons/Angela George
