'The King's Speech' Creates Awareness of Adult Stuttering

During this awards season, "The King's Speech" has been the film with the most momentum, earning seven Golden Globe nominations and winning for Best Picture and Best Actor. Although "The King's Speech" had a slow release in America, Jane Fraser, President of the Stuttering Foundation, said that her organization knew about the film because it dealt with stuttering.

For Oscar weekend, Fraser has made herself available to the media to talk about "The King's Speech" and how the movie has raised awareness of adult stuttering.

What did you think of Colin Firth's performance in "The King's Speech"?

That's the phenomenal thing about it (the movie), to have Colin Firth, who actually transformed himself into King George VI, who watched the old footage of King George and who actually became him, literally. To have someone of that caliber play a person who stutters has just been the most phenomenal thing for all of us. It has given a real awareness to people, even in my own family, of what it is to stutter.

In the film, Colin Fear has an ongoing battle with the microphone, walking up to it like he's walking to the guillotine. How well does "The King's Speech" show the fear that's connected with stuttering?

For King George VI, the microphone was an object to be feared and detested. Just getting him over that fear was desensitization. For people who stutter, just seeing a telephone will trigger fear. One of the reasons the telephone is difficult for people who stutter is when there is silence on the phone, the person on the other end doesn't know that someone is there.

The telephone is always difficult for people who stutter, particularly for people who have a 'silent block'. Some therapists try to desensitize people by putting a phone that's not connected in the therapy room and then have them pretend to make a call. Gradually, they will call a store they don't care about, like calling Wal-Mart and asking if they have any tires for sale.

Lionel Logue, the real-life speech therapist who helped King George VI, is shown using some unconventional methods, including recording the king speaking while he's wearing headphones to prove that he can speak without a stutter.

That's an important point for therapists to make right up front. If you can speak fluently when you are alone, if you can speak fluently wearing earphones with no feedback, if you can speak fluently when you are talking with your dog, then we know you have the motor skill control to do this. I think people who stutter get the feeling over time that they will never be fluent. One of the principal jobs of the therapist is to convince them that they can speak fluently.

The other thing is that he (Lionel Logue) is such a cheerleader. You want to go to someone who says 'I know you can do this, and I know that I can help you.'

The MPAA has given "The King's Speech" an 'R' rating, primarily for the strong language used by the king during his speech therapy. Does swearing play a part in speech therapy?

There's a lot going on there. Some of that is assertiveness. If you can just scream out the F-word, in some ways it is assertiveness, it is desensitizing. What's interesting is that swearing is what David Seidler says helped him, so he worked it into the script. David said that when he turned 16 and was still stuttering, he went around saying 'Oh ****' and he never stuttered on the swear words.

And we've been talking to the folks in England who say that the film is not R-rated over there, these words are not shocking in the least bit for any of our kids. But I think in those days (the 1930's), it had to do with assertiveness. I would put shouting out swear words in a class with Lionel Logue sitting on the throne. What I think he was doing was desensitizing the king.

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