Colin Firth: 'Stammer the wrong way and it is comedic' The King's Speech, which opens on Friday and is tipped for Oscar honours, concerns the terrible struggle George VI had with his speech impediment when he came to the throne in 1936. Colin Firth, in a rare interview, and director Tom Hooper talk about the making of this deeply moving film On the face of it, an entire film devoted to the subject of a speech impediment sounds risky -- even when one learns that the stammer is a royal one, belonging to King George VI. Yet The King's Speech has got off to a tremendous and triumphantly unjittery start. It has been feted in the US, crowned at the British Independent Film awards -- as best British film (with honours for its actors and for David Seidler, who wrote the screenplay) -- and has most recently won seven nominations for the Golden Globe awards. It now seems certain that Colin Firth will be an Oscar contender for his role as the King -- a magnificent, subtle, affecting performance in which his pristine appearance is in contrast to the painful disarray of his speech. The film is about what it means to have -- and not to have -- a voice. Not a small thing, after all. The particular torment for George VI was that his voice had to do more than serve him. It had to speak for -- and to -- the nation as the second world war