Emma Thompson received her honor for Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire on Wednesday at Buckingham Palace.
The actress and writer received the honor from Prince William and was joined by her husband of 15 years, Greg Wise, their daughter, Gaia, and their son, Tindyebwa Agaba Wise.
It’s an honor the Brits don’t take lightly, but Thompson is bound to make it fun, too. This is, after all, a woman who walked onstage barefoot and threw her shoes behind her at the 2014 Golden Globes. “I just want you to know, this red? It’s my blood,” she said of her red-bottom Louboutins before chucking them. In her apparent continued quest to never have to wear heels again, she chose a pair of bright white sneakers for her ceremony on Wednesday.
In a September interview with Seth Meyers, Thompson joked with the late-night host that her daily attitude had changed since first being named for the honor in June.
“Yes. Dame Commander of the British Empire. I’ve become much more commanding since it happened,” she said. “I’ve also had every seat I sit on just made slightly taller. It’s subtle, so people are lifting their heads slightly more toward me than they did before, but they’re not quite sure why.”
The socially aware Thompson also called out some of the darker foundations upon which the empiric honor stands.
“They send you a letter saying, ‘Will you accept it?’ You can choose not to. You can choose to say, ‘Well, of course we don’t have an empire anymore, thank God, because it was ghastly, colonial, racist, dreadful undertaking on every level,’ and actually have some moral principle about it. Or you can be like me and think, ‘Hmm, it’s gonna be a really nice badge.’”
She added that above all of her honors, she was most delighted by a previous encounter with the Queen, in which she watched the monarch open her purse, pull out a dog biscuit, and make her corgis roll over.
No word yet on if Thompson got to see the Queen again at her ceremony (William seemed to take charge of the festivities), but she did wear those presumably comfortable white sneakers. A dame, after all, doesn’t need to wear those pesky heels, not even for the royal family.
