Steve Coogan breaks silence after Leicester academic awarded 'substantial damages' over portrayal in film
Richard Taylor sued Coogan, his production company Baby Cow, and Pathe Productions for libel over his portrayal in The Lost King
Steve Coogan has broken his silence after it was announced he will pay “substantial damages” to a university academic to settle a High Court libel case over his portrayal in a film about the discovery of Richard III’s remains.
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Richard Taylor, now chief operating officer at Loughborough University, sued Coogan, his production company Baby Cow, and Pathe Productions for libel over his portrayal in The Lost King, which follows Philippa Langley and her search to find the king’s skeleton.
The lost remains of the Plantagenet king were found in a Leicester car park in 2012, more than 500 years after his death.
Coogan told LBC's James O'Brien he had hoped to "maintain a dignified silence" following the announcement that the two parties had settled the claim, but after Mr Taylor's recent media appearances he is speaking out.
He said: "Mr Taylor has been running around like a headless chicken. I give him 10 out of 10 for stamina because he's been on every single programme he can find.
"I thought it was time to just put a bit of context around things and not let him keep repeating things that I found a bit egregious."
Coogan continued: "First of all, it was a settlement. It was settled because our key witness, Philippa Langley, was unwell, suffers from ME and chronic fatigue, a debilitating condition that meant she was unable to give evidence.
"I was looking forward to going to court with her to have it all heard there, but we were told, because we didn't have our key witness, that we had one arm tied behind our back.
"So we decided the best thing to do was to settle. So that's what we did."
Read more: Academic to receive ‘substantial damages’ over portrayal in Steve Coogan film
In June last year, Judge Jaron Lewis ruled that the 2022 film portrayed Mr Taylor, who was deputy registrar at the University of Leicester at the time of the discovery, as having “knowingly misrepresented facts to the media and the public” about the find.
The judge also said the film portrayed Mr Taylor as “smug, unduly dismissive and patronising”, which had a defamatory meaning.
Mr Taylor told LBC's Andrew Marr on Wednesday: "The Lost King is supposedly a portrayal of the search for Richard III in Leicester in 2012, of which I was heavily involved at the university.
"And rather than being shown in the way I acted, which is constructively facilitating the search to take place, I'm shown as the villain of the film, thwarting the heroine's move at every juncture and distorting the media in order to put the university centre stage and exclude others.
"And that's essentially the gist of it and essentially the gist of the legal action that I took."
Coogan told LBC the film aimed to "redress the imbalance" around the discovery that was led by Ms Langley, saying she "should have been front and centre".
"She had done the work and she'd done the research," Coogan said.
"When she determined where the location of the friary was in the social services car park, and when the funding was withdrawn, she's the one that raised the funds, that kept the project alive.
"When the bones finally presented themselves sticking out the side of the trench, she was the one that insisted those bones be excavated and the injuries consistent with those suffered by Richard III in the Battle of Bosworth. And so therefore she found him.
"And at that point, Leicester University provided DNA analysis that confirmed that it was him.
"But she didn't have the resources to put her message all around Leicester, on the side of billboards, on the side of buses. She didn't have that. She was an individual. We gave her the means, we gave her the megaphone to tell her side of the story."
Coogan also recalled: "They held press conference to confirm the DNA analysis, that the body was, in fact, those of Richard III.
"Thirteen people spoke there - academics. The 13th person to speak was Philippa Langley.
"Now, my question is quite simply, why did that happen? Why was she 13th to speak? Why was she not hosting the press conference and thanking Leicester University for their assistance in helping her fulfil her projects to find the body of Richard III?"
The libel case was due to proceed to trial, but lawyers for Mr Taylor told a hearing on Monday that the parties had settled the claim.
Reading out a statement in court, William Bennett KC, for Mr Taylor, said: “Mr Taylor contended that the depiction of him in this untrue way in the film caused serious harm to his professional and personal reputations and caused enormous distress and embarrassment to him.
“The defendants have now settled Mr Taylor’s claim in the libel against them for the publication of the film by paying him substantial damages.
“Furthermore, they have agreed to make changes to the film in order to withdraw the allegations complained of and to pay him his legal costs.”
Coogan told LBC they have added a message at the beginning of the film as per the settlement.
He explained: "We haven't changed the film in the slightest. We put a card at the beginning, effectively a notice saying that the character in the film bears no relation to... the fictitious Richard Taylor we have in the film bears no relation to the real Richard Taylor, who behaved with integrity throughout.
"But apart from that, the film remains intact. It's there for all to see. It will be there in perpetuity long after myself and Richard Taylor have shuffled off this mortal coil."