INT. DRAWING-ROOM - COUNTRY RETREAT - DAY

Everyone is waiting for the outcome of KING EDWARD'S attack.
The super-cool RICHARD takes out an Abdulla. At his side, BUCKINGHAM offers a light and then lights his own fat cigar - he is smooth as an agent and RICHARD is soon to become his star client.

RICHARD
(aside to BUCKINGHAM)

This is the fruits of rashness.

(to HASTINGS and CATESBY)

Marked you not,
How that the guilty brother of the Queen 
Looked pale, when he did hear of Clarence's death? 
God will revenge it!

The door opens. The DUCHESS OF YORK has arrived with LORD STANLEY. BUCKINGHAM goes to greet her.

DUCHESS OF YORK

0 Clarence, Clarence, my unhappy son.

LORD STANLEY 

This news is bad indeed. What, is he in his bed?

RICHARD

He is. 0 he has over-used his royal person much.

Before the DUCHESS OF YORK can be led to her son's bedside, there is a SCREAM and commotion from the floor above.

Richard can hardly wait for the fortuitous death of his elder brother and the power vacuum that his own Lord Protectorship can fill. Buckingham is already at his side, as Richard slides over to Hastings and Catesby whose support, as Prime Minister and Civil Service Chief, he will also need. Lady Anne is ignored once more.

All the scenes at Brighton Pavilion (39, 41, 48, 49 and 50) were shot through the night. The day before night-filming is for sleep, which I can usually induce, with the aid of Boots' waxen ear-plugs and a British Airways' eye-shade. During the working night, as the real world outside sleeps, the enclosed fraternity of film- making intensifies. Caffeine is on tap from the tea and coffee urns, although I enjoy cat-napping whether sitting, leaning or lying down.

After the hot meal in the early hours, I restored energies by sleeping on my caravan fold-down double-bed, my right cheek on the pillow, careful to avoid disturbing Daniel Parker's prosthetics on my left side. The night's work over, there was breakfast at dawn and then a second day's sleep at the hotel, with ear-plugs again, muffling the chambermaids at their housekeeping.

'This news is bad indeed.' This line and Richard's reply are borrowed from elsewhere in the play (1.1) where Hastings has been newly released from The Tower - a sub-plot that was omitted because of its long roots in the Wars of the Roses.

INT. THE KING'S BEDROOM - COUNTRY RETREAT - DAY

A scene of mayhem.

On top of the royal bed, KING EDWARD has died, his mouth fixed in an agonised last gasp for breath.

On one side of him, his DOCTOR searches for a pulse with his stethoscope.

On the other, QUEEN ELIZABETH tries to revive her husband's corpse, with thumps of rage and fear. She never planned to be a powerless widow.

As RIVERS tries to restrain her, QUEEN ELIZABETH rushes out, uncontrollable.

RIVERS follows her down the corridor, without a glance at PRINCESS ELIZABETH, who gazes at death for the first time in her protected, young life.

The DOCTOR examines the corpse. The NURSE looks tearful, as she closes the shutters. The ARCHBISHOP mumbles an obsequy.

INT. DRAWING-ROOM - COUNTRY RETREAT - DAY

QUEEN ELIZABETH rushes down the stairs and collapses onto a chair.

DUCHESS OF YORK 

What means this scene of rude impatience?

QUEEN ELIZABETH 

Edward, my Lord, your son, our King is dead!

Everyone wonders what should happen next. A nervous silence. Before HASTINGS has a chance to speak, BUCKINGHAM takes control.

RICHARD looks to HASTINGS and LORD STANLEY. They nod their approval.

RIVERS enters, out of breath, and goes to help his sister.

QUEEN ELIZABETH 

Why grow the branches, now the root is withered? 
Why wither not the leaves, the sap being gone?

DUCHESS OF YORK 

Alas! I am the mother of these griefs. 
On me pour all your tears; I am your sorrow's nurse.

RICHARD

Elizabeth, have comfort. All of us have cause 
To wail the dimming of our shining star.

BUCKINGHAM

Though we have spent our harvest of this King, 
We are to reap the harvest of his son.

RIVERS

Sister, think you like a careful mother 
Of the Prince of Wales, your son. Send straight for him. 
Let him be crowned; in him your comfort lies.

BUCKINGHAM takes control. The Lord Protector's dry-eyed party is framed together, as they face the grieving mother, widow and her brother. 

'We are to reap the harvest of his son.' Buckingham needs no prompt from Richard as he presents his plan. 'The King is dead. Long live the King - and the Lord Protector!' so to speak.

BUCKINGHAM
(to QUEEN ELIZABETH) 

Meseemeth good that, with some little train, 
The Prince be brought to London to be crowned.

RIVERS

Why 'with some little train', my Lord of Buckingham?

BUCKINGHAM 

Lest by a multitude, dear sir,
The new-healed wound of civil war break out.

RICHARD
(supporting BUCKINGHAM) 

I hope the King made peace with all of us:
And the compact is firm and true in me.

RIVERS
(reluctantly)

And so in me. And so, I think, in all. 
Therefore, I say, with noble Buckingham, 
It's fitting that so few should meet the Prince.

'Why "with some little train", my Lord of Buckingham?'

Having been enthralled by Robert Downey Jr's performance as Chaplin, I jumped at the chance to act with him in Restoration in the summer of 1994. As the wastrel Merivel, he effortlessly combined innocence with sexiness, sentiment with slapstick. As his loyal servant Will Gates, I found it easy to be both paternal and respectful.

We were under pressure from our financiers who wanted another internationally recognised name in the cast list, as well as Annette Bening. I called Robert at his home in Malibu, knowing that Rivers was too small a part for him to accept. I misjudged his generosity. He wanted to help the film be made and immediately cleared his diary for three weeks in London. Richard III and Restoration were released in North America on the same day, 22 December 1995.

'And so in me.' Rivers, the American playboy, does not have a chance against the scheming heavyweight team of Richard and Buckingham.

Everyone nods agreement and looks toward RICHARD, the Lord Protector, who, in turn, defers to HASTINGS, the Prime Minister.

HASTINGS 

And so say I.

RICHARD 

Then, be it so.

RIVERS leads QUEEN ELIZABETH toward the door, where the ARCHBISHOP is waiting with professional commiseration. They leave.

DUCHESS OF YORK
(following)

Now two mirrors of my husband's likeness 
Are cracked in pieces, by malignant death.

(to LORD STANLEY, who offers his arm) 

And I, for comfort, have but one false glass, 
That grieves me when I see my shame in him.

RICHARD

Madam, Mother, I do humbly crave your blessing.

DUCHESS OF YORK 
(sourly) 

God bless you - and put meakness in your breast, 
Love, charity, obedience and true duty!

The DUCHESS OF YORK sails out with LORD STANLEY.

HASTINGS and CATESBY see RICHARD is upset and discreetly leave.

RICHARD
(wryly; but he's been hurt by his mother) 

Amen! And make me die a good old man. 
That is the butt-end of a mother's blessing. 
I marvel that Her Grace did leave it out!

BUCKINGHAM 
(taking RICHARD'S arm) 

My Lord Protector. 

Agent and client have made a contract. They leave, forgetting LADY ANNE. A FOOTMAN respectfully draws the blinds.

DUCHESS OF YORK. I had always hoped that Maggie Smith would agree to play my mother, a small part for which she is, of course, far too young, but which needs a dominant personality to convey the emotional barrenness of Richard's childhood.

Maggie and I first made contact in 1964, when she was a young star of Laurence Olivier's newly formed National Theatre Company. She was about to play Beatrice in Franco Zeffirelli's production of Much Ado About Nothing. The search was on for a young Claudio, a part I had played three years before, in my first job at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry. Having seen me in my West End debut in A Scent of Flowers, Maggie recommended me to Olivier and Zeffirelli. I auditioned in front of all the National Theatre directors and joined the company to play Claudio again.

Also gathered beneath Olivier's wing were many young actors hoping for the same roles -Jeremy Brett, Mike Gambon, Edward Hardwicke, Anthony Hopkins, Derek Jacobi, Edward Petherbridge, Ronald Pickup, John Stride, Christopher Timothy and Michael York as well as the established younger stars like Colin Blakely, Albert Finney, Frank Finlay and Robert Stephens. Eight months later, I left the company and although Olivier wrote to me that I should stay to build up my personal repertoire with him and that he was 'haunted by the spectre of lost opportunity', I found I could get better parts as a freelance actor.

I did not work with Dame Maggie again until the film. I see everything she appears in, but missed her stage debut in Oxford as Viola in Twelfth Night (1952) and her later Shakespeare during her 1976-80 sojourn in Stratford, Ontario, where she played Queen Elizabeth to Brian Bedford's Richard III.

EXT. LORD PROTECTOR'S HEADQUARTERS - DAY

RATCLIFFE manoeuvres the Lord Protector's limousine, carrying RICHARD and BUCKINGHAM, through the tall, wrought-iron gates into an enclosed courtyard.

INT. LOBBY - LORD PROTECTOR'S HEADQUARTERS - DAY

RICHARD and BUCKINGHAM walk through the imposing lobby.

RICHARD and BUCKINGHAM walk through the imposing lobby.

The film's architecture radically changes with this expression of the Lord Protector's power, the lobby of the Senate House in London University (built in 1936) with its large expanses of marble. During the Second World War, the Ministry of Information occupied the Senate House, from which was broadcast information about Dunkirk and the D-Day landings.

It took five days to add the atmospheric footsteps to the finished soundtrack. To facilitate this and to prevent the actors' actual footsteps competing with their dialogue, any leather soles were cushioned during filming, by applied strips of thin foam-rubber.

INT. HALL/STAIRWAY - LORD PROTECTOR'S HEADQUARTERS - DAY

RICHARD and BUCKINGHAM walk through the hall and up the grand staircase.

BUCKINGHAM

My Lord, whoever journeys to the Prince, 
For God's sake, let not us two stay at home. 
And let us part Earl Rivers from the Prince.

RICHARD 

My other self.
My oracle, my prophet, my dear Buckingham. 
I, as a child, will go by your direction.

INT. LORD PROTECTOR'S OFFICE - DAY

RICHARD and BUCKINGHAM have reached the door to the office of the Lord Protector.

RICHARD pushes open the door, revealing the interior of his newly appointed working premises, worthy of the most powerful leader in the country and dominated by an iconic oil painting of a physically perfect RICHARD, which is mounted on the end wall.

The oil painting is now revealed later, in scene 74, by which time it is appropriate that Richard's self-confidence should be increasingly on display.

INT. HOTEL CORRIDOR - DAY

CHAMBERMAID, with towels, notes 'Do not Disturb' sign on a bedroom door and carries on along the corridor. TYRELL, approaching from the opposite direction, gives her a wink.

INT. HOTEL BEDROOM - DAY

Through the thin curtains, the afternoon sun shines on RIVERS, lying back, naked, on the brass-headed double-bed in the luxury hotel room, which he has rented for a couple of hours. The AIR HOSTESS french-kisses him.
The CAMERA closes in on RIVERS.
As Miss Pan-Am moves down his chest to attend to lower parts, unseen by him, the door silently opens a little. CLOSE on RIVERS, as his ecstasy rapidly reaches an agonising climax, a long, sharp blade slices up through the mattress, emerging out of his chest.

The AIR HOSTESS screams simultaneously with a piercing Train whistle.

An early draft had Rivers executed by Tyrell in The Tower, his body thrown into the murky, fast-flowing Thames. The more distinctive death of the final screenplay was devised by RL. The nasty stabbing effect was achieved by filming a blade piercing a dummy body and then transferring it via computer onto the film of Robert Downey's torso, which thankfully remains unhurt and unscarred.

Train whistle. The housekeeper in Hitchcock's The Thirty-nine Steps (1935) discovers a corpse and opens her mouth to scream in time with the whistle of the steam-engine carrying away the supposed murderer, Richard Hannay.

EXT. RAILWAY VIADUCT - DAY

Across the massive monument to Victorian engineering, a steam train thunders forward, pulling its royal carriages through vistas of an idyllic, rural landscape.

INT. ROYAL TRAIN - DAY

A comfortable drawing-room on wheels.

The slim, rather cocky heir to the throne, Edward, PRINCE OF WALES, in his private-school uniform, is taking tea, opposite his massive minder, the Duke of Buckingham, whose cigar smoke lingers in the beams of sunshine.

The Prince of Wales takes a crumpled pack of ten Senior Service from his trouser pocket. The ever-obliging Buckingham offers him a light.

Shortage of funds and time robbed the new young King of this first entrance.

SCENE 59 

EXT. THE COUNTRYSIDE - DAY

The steam train rushes on towards the capital, as the countryside gives way to a cityscape.