Cate Blanchett on Eating Lunch with Queen Elizabeth — and Being Asked to Fix Prince Philip’s DVD Player

Cate Blanchett is opening up about her lunch with Queen Elizabeth.

Appearing on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen on Wednesday, August 7, the actress and producer, 55, revealed that she once ate with Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace — but somehow wound up being asked if she could repair Prince Philip's DVD player.

“I had lunch at the palace,” Blanchett said. 

Asked why she was invited, the Lord of the Rings star replied, “I do not know. The head of the fire brigade was there and Helen Fielding — not the novelist — the scientist, was there.”

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“I thought maybe because I played her ancestor Queen Elizabeth I, but I mean, Prince Philip just asked if I could help him with his DVD player,” Blanchett continued. “Because I was an actress,” she added with a laugh.

“Oh, that old line,” Gina Gershon, who costars with Blanchett in the new movie Borderlands, added.

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“And did you help him?” host Cohen, 56, asked, to which Blanchett responded, “No, I did not. I’m not technical.” 

Asked if she thought the late Queen had seen Blanchett’s 1998 movie Elizabeth, where she played Queen Elizabeth I, the actress joked, “It became very clear that she had not!”

Back in 2018, Blanchett opened up about her interaction with the late Prince Philip.

Speaking to U.K. talk show host Jonathan Ross, she said, “There were 12 of us, and I couldn’t work out for the life of me why I’d been invited.”

“I sat next to [Philip], and he said, ‘I hear you’re an actor? I was given a DVD player for Christmas, and I can’t work out whether I put the green cord in or the red cord,’ ” she recalled.

She added with a laugh, “I thought, ‘He’s invited me to lunch to tell me about his DVD player!’ ”