Standard: British and American accents
Source: www.speakup.com.br
Language level: Upper intermediate
The Artist Formerly Known as Princess
In the 1980s Sarah Ferguson, officially “Sarah, Duchess of York,” was probably one of the most recognizable people in the world. “Fergie,” as the press called her, wasn’t quite as famous as her friend and relative, Princess Diana, but she was still a major celebrity. The reason was her marriage in 1986 to Prince Andrew, the younger brother of Prince Charles. When that marriage ended in divorce in 1996, she ceased to be a member of the Royal Family, but she retained the title “Duchess of York,” while her two daughters are fifth and sixth in line to the throne.
MAKING MOVIES
If Sarah Ferguson has faded from the public eye – except for a recent media set up – then she has reinvented herself as a writer and TV and film producer. She was closely involved in the film Young Victoria, which was released last year. Starring Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend, it tells of the love affair between Victoria and her consort Prince Albert, who is immortalized in such London Monuments as the “Royal Albert Hall” and the “Victoria and Albert Museum.” When Sarah Ferguson met with the press, she talked about celebrity:
Sarah Ferguson
(Standard British accent):
It’s very interesting that a lot of people don’t know who I am even, you know? So, young people today do live in a different kind of cyberspace, I suppose, if that’s the word, and so I find it very interesting. Yesterday, when I was walking down the red carpet, and an…actual journalist asked me, “So what part did you play in the film?” “Er…no, no, I’m not an actress!” “Oh, oh, well, what do you do?” And so I think that the Maori tribesmen in New Zealand knew of Empress Queen Victoria. There was no email, no telephone, no television, but they knew. How is that? That’s why I think it’s so important to wake everybody up to history and how important it is and how much they could learn from the strength of an extraordinary leader.
A ROYAL ROMANCE
And, as she explains, Prince Albert played an important role in the development of Britain:
Sarah Ferguson:
One of the keys to this film is for everyone to realize that, no matter what and no matter how, you can hat love. You can have a soul mate. It is meant to be. She was meant to have the support of this man going through her reign. Sadly, he was taken away, but right this very second, if you go to London now, and you see the sewage systems, you see the roads, all done by Albert. So my next movie would probably be about Albert and what he brought to Britain, as it wasn’t his country, he was German, a scientist, and I think that, really, we owe a great deal of debt to Albert. As you drive through Windsor, you see the statue of Queen Victoria, she’s small, always dressed in black and loving donkeys, and yet I wanted it portrayed that she ran down the hill of Coburg with no shoes on and cornflower blue…flowers in her hair for dinner because Albert liked it. She was taught to paint by Winterhalter, she played duets. The magic, I think of a lot of the architecture, the buildings, what we have in Britain, in down to this woman and the love they had together.
DI AND I
Sarah Ferguson was then asked where she had been when she had heard the dramatic news of Princess Diana’s death in 1997.
Sarah Ferguson:
I was in Italy and I heard it on the news and I didn’t believe it, so I rang on the mobile. I said, “Dutch, Dutch, this is ridiculous! Call me! Call me! What’s happened, are you OK? I’m coming!” And then, of course, no, she had gone and it was just, for me, it was a sense of enormous…I mean, I’ve never got…really got over it because she was my fourth cousin, my best friend since I was (a) little girl and then my sister-in-law. And she was the only one of that time that both of us were together when, OK, “Fergie the sinner and Diana the saint “Sold newspapers, but it didn’t stop our friendship. And we worked together and she brought me in to marry Andrew and we were a team together, we were a unit and no one could separate us.
TEAM SPIRIT
And, in conclusion, she talked about her relationship with Prince Andrew today:
Sarah Ferguson:
It’s (an) extraordinary tale and I think the love that Albert and Victoria have, I think one of the ways that I feel very close is that, if I only Andrew and I had fought harder for our love, I think we’d probably still be together now. And we both say the same, and that’s why I think that he fully supports me in this and we are a total unit. We’re divorced to each other, not from each other, in order to bring up the girls.
