Catherine Tate's sympathy for the Royals as she launches her new comedy Queen Of Oz

In her new sitcom, Queen Of Oz, Catherine Tate plays a member of the Royal Family who’s become such an embarrassment that she’s despatched to Australia, where it’s thought she can do less damage to the monarchy.

But she is quick to point out that her ‘spoilt, entitled and deeply unpleasant’ character, Georgie, is ‘an entirely fictitious creation’.

‘I didn't study any member of the royal family,’ she insists at a press event to launch the show. ‘I wasn’t thinking of anyone. It’s a piece of entertainment… you have to take artistic licence.’

In fact, she expresses sympathy for the real royals, saying: ‘It must be awful to be constantly looked at and constantly scrutinised. I can imagine nothing worse than having to dedicate your life to the public. I think that's no mean feat.’

Tate met the late Queen after the 2005 Royal Variety Performance  ‘when everyone lines up to shake hands’ after she had appeared on stage as teenager Lauren Cooper.

‘She was very gracious and engaged,’ Tate said. ‘No mean feat when you think of how many of us she had to meet.’ 

Queen Of Oz was originally the brainchild of Canadian producer Borga Dorter, who contacted Tate with the idea – but initially they had the minor royal sent to Canada to become their Queen, rather than Australia. 

‘I met with him and he pitched this idea, that it's a minor member of a – fictitious – royal family and it's like a fish out of water being dragged kicking and screaming…  I loved it and I said yeah.’

They pitched the original idea to Canadian broadcasters but in the ‘years’ it took to get a decision, Tate toured Australia and decided it would be better to set it there ‘and Queen of Oz is actually a catchier title’.

But that wasn’t the end of the delays in bringing the show to screens. ‘It took a while to develop,’ she said. ‘Then it got greenlit and Covid happened, then – and I know I'm not supposed to talk about this, but then Doctor Who happened. So every time it just kept getting pushed back, and back and back. And we ended up not shooting it until last autumn.’  

Tate filmed the sci-fi show’s 60th anniversary episodes with David Tennant from May to July last year, before travelling out to Australia for ‘five or six months’ to film Queen Of Oz.

Speaking about her character, she explains: ‘She’s a reluctant Queen as she really thought she was going to live out her life going to parties, not do much of anything or have any responsibility. 

‘So she gets a very rude awakening getting shipped off to Australia as their newly-crowned Queen. She's very difficult, very hard to work for and doesn't make it easy for anyone. She's spoilt, entitled and deeply unpleasant which of course makes her a great character to play.

 ‘She does evolve over the series because you can't have someone just always shouting, but at the same time, it's not a transformation. For me, that's not funny, when someone who is inherently one way then becomes another way. She doesn't particularly learn a lesson. But  there's a softening and  a reckoning, but at the heart of it, I felt I had to keep her who she was.’

‘Her relationship to Australia really takes the place of the usual romcom, they start off hating each other and in the end, as it progresses, she has to come to love it because she's its Queen.’

Much of the series was shot in the historic Swifts mansion in Darling Point in Sydney, with Tate saying: ‘ Walking into that location for the first time we were open-mouthed because we did actually feel like we were filming The Crown! Absolutely sumptuous and I think this historic gem in the middle of Sydney works fantastically on screen.’

But filming some on-locations scenes  was more of a challenge. ‘The Outback was mad,’ she said. ‘I've never seen before a leech

‘We'd be standing there and all of a sudden, Dave [Roberts], the guy who plays Richard Steele, someone literally goes "Dave, don’t move". He’s like, "What?".  Blood seeping out from his trousers –  from his jeans. Because of the leech. The nearest I got was one on my Uggs – but that was bad enough.’

Asked what she hoped audiences would take away from the series, Tate joked: ‘I hope they take away the desire for a second one’ – adding that it ended on a cliffhanger that would be a perfect story point to resolve in a second run.’

But she was also pragmatic about it not being renewed. ‘I'm not particularly sentimental,’ she said. ‘I'm dead-eyed like a shark when I do something. I mean, I'll never watch this again. I’m like "What's next?"’

‘Comedy is hard objectively and you can never second guess what people are going to like. You can only be happy with yourself and put it out there.'

• Queen Of Oz launches on BBC One at 9.30pm next Friday.

Published: 6 Jun 2023