This is a really weird story. Helen Mirren isn’t the one who did anything wrong, from what I can see, but she’s become the central figure in a very interesting English Theater Scandal (someone consult Miss Marple!). For much of 2013, Helen Mirren starred in a London production of playwright and screenwriter Peter Morgan’s The Audience. Mirren was playing Queen Elizabeth II again (like she did in Morgan’s The Queen), and the gist of the play was the Queen’s audience with all of her prime ministers, starting from when she first became Queen in 1952 (her first prime minister was Winston Churchill). The play did very well and Mirren once again received glowing reviews. She also received a handful of prestigious theater awards this year, including “Best Actress” at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards last month. Therein lies the rub.

From what I can tell, the Evening Standard Theatre Awards are sort of like the Critics Choice – a group of theatre critics get together and vote and whoever gets the most votes “wins”. Obviously. But something happened behind-the-scenes and now theater critics are all up in arms:

There’s no doubt that Helen Mirren is a critically acclaimed actress, but did she win her latest award fair and square? That seems to be the hotly debated topic at hand after she won Best Actress at the 2013 Evening Standard Theatre awards recently.

After much debate during the secret voting process, Dame Helen was voted as the top female performer of the year based on her work as the Queen in The Audience.

Standard movie critic Henry Hitchings ended up pushing Mirren into the lead place with his second vote. He later defended his decision to change his original vote, which ultimately lead to a tie break between Mirren and another actress.

The only issue is, in light of Hitchings’ vote change, that outsiders are speculating that the voting was rigged. In fact, three of the seven judges on the voting panel, Charles Spencer, Georgina Brown and Susannah Clapp, have chosen not to return next year.

According to the BBC, one of the judges said that “one of the awards seemed like a fix.”

Sarah Sands, an editor and fellow awards judge, said that Hitchings initially voted for Rosalie Craig, but was actually forced to change his vote after her name was transferring into the Best Musical Performance Category. Mirren, she claims, was always his second choice and therefore became the frontrunner in the Best Actress category.

Sands, who insisted that her vote remained unchanged throughout the process, has spoken out about the need for a more public ceremony during the 2014 voting process.

[From E! News]

I was wading through some additional coverage of this ZOMG SCANDAL in the UK papers and it seems like some of the theater critics – the ones who left – are saying that they were “surprised” when Helen’s name was called at the ceremony, like they didn’t realize she had actually won. Which is weird because it seems like the voting process was pretty straight-forward? LOL, the theater critics are all “TWIHARD PROOF!”

Anyway, as I said, it’s not like this is Helen’s fault. She wasn’t in there, stuffing ballot boxes (OR WAS SHE?). This is just internal theater critic BS. But it has put a damper on what seemed like a somewhat obvious choice, to me at least. I mean, Helen Mirren playing the Queen? Give her all the awards!!

Photos courtesy of WENN.