Cate Blanchett experienced some technical difficulties when she met Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth II . The Oscar-winning actress, 55, was a guest on “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen” on Wednesday, August 7, and said that during a visit to Buckingham Palace, the late Queen Elizabeth ’s husband asked her if she could help fix his DVD player. The revelation came while Blanchett was playing a game the show calls, “Have! You! Met Them!?” alongside her “Borderlands” co-star Gina Gershon , 62.
When the pair were questioned if they had met Queen Elizabeth II, Gershon was not surprised to learn that the Aussie star, who played Queen Elizabeth I in the movies “Elizabeth” (1998) and “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” (2007) and Elizabeth II in a 2012 episode of “Family Guy,” had met the monarch. “I had lunch at the palace,” Blanchett said of her meet-cute with QEII and Prince Philip, which appears to have happened in the interregnum between the actress’ two performances as the English queen’s famed ancestor and before she voiced a cartoon version of Her Majesty. To this day, Blanchett has no idea why she was invited to Buckingham Palace.
“I do not know,” the actor told Cohen, 56, when asked why she received the invite. “The head of the fire brigade was there and Helen Fielding — not the novelist — the scientist, was there.” “I thought maybe because I played her ancestor Queen Elizabeth I, but I mean, Prince Philip just asked if I coul.