Actress Cate Blanchett is opening up about a rather awkward encounter with the late Prince Philip during a previous trip to Buckingham Palace.
On Wednesday, Aug. 7, the Lord of the Rings star broke the news that she once ate lunch with the Late Queen Elizabeth and, rather inexplicably, was asked by the late Prince Philip to help him with an apparently pesky DVD player.
"I had lunch at the palace,” Blanchett revealed, before admitting that she did "not know" why she was actually invited.
"The head of the fire brigade was there and Helen Fielding—not the novelist, the scientist—was there," she continued. "I thought maybe because I played her ancestor Queen Elizabeth I, but I mean..."
Blanchett then revealed that during her Buckingham Palace visit, the late Prince Philip made a rather odd request.
"Prince Philip just asked if I could help him with his DVD player,” the actress explained. “Because I was an actress."
When host Andy Cohen asked Blanchett whether or not she actually helped the late royal with his DVD, she revealed she's not what one would consider the DVD-fixing type.
“No, I did not," she responded. "I’m not technical.”
Prince Philip was married to the late Queen Elizabeth, and passed away on April 9, 2021, at 99 years of age. The late Queen Elizabeth died on Sept. 8, 2022, at the age of 96 and after more than 70 years on the throne.
When asked if she believed the late Queen had watched the film in which Blanchett portrayed Queen Elizabeth I, the actress emphatically responded: “It became very clear that she had not!”
Blanchett played Queen Elizabeth I not once but twice, in the 1998 film Elizabeth and the 2007 film Elizabeth: The Golden Age.
"I've been lucky enough to be able to choose things that interest me,'' Blanchett said in one 2007 interview, regarding the numerous acting opportunities she enjoyed in-between the films. "A career is born of what you do with the opportunities that present themselves.''
