‘At one point, Taylor and Burton were called on the set, extras were being placed, and cameras were about to roll, when a tremendous clap of thunder shook the ground, a torrential downpour fell, and everyone scattered. Richard grabbed Elizabeth’s hand and pulled her toward the plaster facade of a palace wall.
“Have you lost your mind?” Elizabeth asked Richard. “We’ll get drenched here. They call them facade for a reason, numbskull.”
Richard climbed a painter’s ladder and reached into a bucket. From it he retrieved an open bottle of wine.
“Do you know how long it takes to get this makeup done if it gets wet?” Elizabeth continued complaining.
“Well it’s already wet, isn’t it?” Burton said as he took a swig and handed the bottle to her.
Elizabeth spotted Hank Lustig, huddling in a relatively dry spot. “You there!”
“Me?”
She yanked the bottle from Burton’s grasp and brandished it. “Did you bring this here?”
“Certainly not!” Lusting responded.
“Good. This man is not to be drinking on duty,” she said quite seriously of Richard. “By order of the Queen.”
Lustig was unsure how to respond as the two stars watched him for his reaction, then burst into spontaneous laughter. He recalls, “They spent about the next twenty minutes or so peering through cracks in the facade, or peeking out the door. They laughed almost the entire time, or at least mostly she did, from things he would whisper to her. It was like they were children hiding from their parents.”
At one point, a suspicious silence led Lustig to check if the two had left. They hadn’t. They were passionately kissing. The silence was broken in a strange, less-than-romantic way.
“Ouch!” Elizabeth shouted.
“What the hell is it?” Richard asked.
“There are hairpins in this,” she shouted. “You can’t just take it off like a hat!”
“You scared the daylights out of me.”
“Well, you’re pulling my hair out!”
The two continued bickering until, again, silence fell. Lusting knew they were back at it, and didn’t need to spy this time.
It was decided that it would be best for Elizabeth to depart first, so that they wouldn’t be seen leaving together. She started out, then turned back to Richard. “You truly are a horrible, horrible man.”
“If I was twice as awful,” he said, returning the volley, “I’d be perfect for you.”
She smirked a bit before stepping back into the real world. Richard pressed his face close to the crack in the door and watched her go. “You still with us?” he then bellowed. Hank Lustig leaned out from his hiding spot. “You know, if you weren’t here that might have ended differently,” Richard said.
“I’m sorry…”’
-Excerpt from “Elizabeth” by J. Randy Taraborrelli, pp. 182-184. Published by PAN Books in paperback in 2007.
(Source: levi-jadetaylor)
