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CNN Live Event/Special

Britain Pays Final Respects To The Queen. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired September 19, 2022 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: King Charles III offering a farewell salute to his mother before her coffin left London for the last time. Now the one of the impactful images from Queen Elizabeth's funeral today, there were so many. We want to hear from more of the people who crowded the streets to see the Queen. Let's go to Nada Bashir in Windsor. Nada?

NADA BASHIR, CNN REPORTER: And so we're seeing streams of people coming from the long walk after viewing that procession paying their final respects to the Queen many of them with camping chairs, blankets, of course may even have been waiting for hours, some of them even overnight for this historic moment. And we're joined by Becca and Sarah who actually at the long walk, what was that experience like for you to be there?

SARAH TAYLOR, PAID TRIBUTE AT WINDSOR: It was a real somber moment, but also it's a celebration. And I feel that everybody was there to celebrate the Queen and the new King if I'm completely honest. It was a real spectacle, a real spectacle to see.

BASHIR: Yes. I mean, this is a moment of history. It's something I'm sure you'll remember for the rest of your life.

BECCA GILLETT, PAID TRIBUTE AT WINDSOR: Yes, 100 percent. It was really emotional seeing everybody there.

TAYLOR: Particularly the hearse --

GILLETT: Yes, yes.

TAYLOR: You could feel the mood change. And everybody kind of, you know, became tearful, but then again, clapped afterwards.

GILLETT: There was silence within the carpet. It was honestly, really emotional.

BASHIR: And you're both local to Windsor, I mean how integral is the royal family to this town?

TAYLOR: It's immense. It's absolutely immense. I think all of us are so proud to have our whole royal family beyond our doorstep. I mean to come into Windsor and you live five minute away from the castle and the Queen would and hopefully King Charles will, it's just amazing. We're so proud.

BASHIR: And that really is the sentiment we've been hearing from people across this high street here, Anderson, many of them so proud to have been part at this moment of history. But of course, there is a somber mood. This is the final resting place for the late, Queen, Anderson.

COOPER: Yes, Nada Bashir, thank you so much. Back with Max Foster, Kate Williams, and Clarissa Ward. Max, I mean you have been covering this around the clock. I don't know how you're holding up, but what stands out to you today?

MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR & ROYAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, it's exactly as we expected in terms of the planning, which I think is extraordinary in itself when you see all the people involved. I thought it was obviously very moving. I think that image of Prince Charles as he was King Charles now but I think of Prince Charles because he was looking at his mother being lowered into the royal vault and I -- who knows what those tears were about, but you wonder if it's as a son, or, you know, combined with the fact he's got this weight now, that was the final goodbye for the public, they now look to him.

[12:35:21]

And I thought that was very defining. I thought it was also very defining to see George and Charlotte, watching all of that unfold a front row seat, so they could then use that to inform their own future royal roles. And I just think, you know, I didn't know the Queen personally, but I knew that she was involved in all of this, I knew how it played out, and it must have been so heartening to her looking down to see the family come together, to focus on her. And for, you know, the public to come out in the way that they did, the way that there were people all along the route from Westminster to Windsor, I mean, it's extraordinary.

COOPER: I've been doing this podcast called, All There Is. And it's about loss and grief. And a lot was -- some of the things a lot of people talk to me about in it is how in an event like there's the adrenaline gets you through for the first cup, you know, first week. There's the there's the death of your loved one, the you know, the shock of it, the gathering of family members, there's the funeral there's activity which keeps you sort of up and fueled by adrenaline but now for and Don mentioned this earlier, you know, you saw that vehicle driving off the King and Queen driving off alone. For a lot of members of the royal family, this will be the first time after the final ceremony tonight that this really kind of sinks in.

KATE WILLIAMS, CNN ROYAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, this really is such a significant moment, isn't it? As you say the adrenaline when you lose, someone often gets you through and then you realize when that moment happens when the coffin is taken from you that they are no longer there and you are now alone. And it is so poignant for the King, he is now -- he served the longest ever apprenticeship for this role. He is now King Charles III, the -- we have that very moving moments when the Queen's imperial crown, the scepter, and the orb, the symbols of monarchy were taken from the coffin, put on the altar to symbolize is the end of her reign, the beginning of that of King Charles III.

And I think that so many people watching at home who've lost someone really can see in this moment, this moment is both a celebration, a commemoration and all those crowds who are out there. And as Prince William said, The Prince of Wales said earlier, she could never have believed all these crowds, the billions watching all over the world, to mark this great reign of 70 years.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think the crowds were, we all knew that this was going to be a momentous occasion, and that many people would want to participate and witness and pay their respects in some way. But to see the sort of throngs of people along the long walk, which has, I think they had to close it off at a certain point has a capacity of 170,000, authorities have said they're not going to release figures today of the crowd sizes all over. We know the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has said hundreds of thousands came to London. And then of course, you had the extraordinary queue to go and see the Queen when she was lying in state, which I believe was up to 24 hours, five miles long, at one stage.

So in due course, we'll get the sort of specific numbers. But what was astonishing was every day, every moment for 10 days, and all these various ceremonies that punctuated or demarcated this morning period, you did see this incredible outpouring from the public of all different stripes backgrounds, many people not even monarchies, per se, but all of them wanting to, I think, participate in this moment in history in some small way, and also to pay their respects to a monarch who reigned for more than 70 years and who was widely seen as being a sort of picture, an emblem of devotion and duty.

COOPER: And so many things we saw today, we will never see again, I mean, the monarch who ruled for 70 years, a monarch who, in her death brought the world's leaders in a way together. I don't think we'll ever see a gathering of world leaders like this anytime soon.

WILLIAMS: Gathering of world leaders, we had 1,000 we believe at the Buckingham Palace reception. There were hundreds at Westminster Abbey, we won't see a gathering of Commonwealth leaders, I believe, like there's ever again. They were both at St. George's Chapel and Westminster Abbey. They really reflect the Queen's international work. And I'm struck by something said by the Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, who said that the Queen's work and repairing relationships between Britain and Germany after the war will never be forgotten. And he said that's why in Germany we are mourning her.

We've been talking about how the Queen's spent the war at Windsor Castle. She gave her first wartime message to that children who've been evacuated there. Then after the war she served in the war and in the delivery training service. And after the war and when she became Queen, she really put such work into reconciliation and reconciliation and peace was really what she hoped for having seen so much in the war, and I think that was marked by so many of the states when he talked about oh, it's like President Biden, saying the end of an era and I think that she's the 11th monarch to buried at St. George's Chapel wings, we've had a day steeped in history, from the 11,000 year Windsor Castle, 1,000 year Westminster Abbey. And yet so much of it was about history. But so much it was about this modern international Queen who worked in a global world.

[12:40:39]

FOSTER: Yes, she was revolutionary in many ways, wasn't she? But there was that over 70 years, you never put a foot wrong. So everyone always says and not putting a foot wrong is never expressing an opinion or thoughts just always rising above politics. So those world leaders identified with her lifetime because she never divided opinion. And that's really hard to do over 70 years.

COOPER: I want to thank you all for our coverage today.

Up next, the Royal rites of passage that we saw today, their significance and how they'll figure into King Charles's reign.

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[12:45:33]

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Even as Queen Elizabeth was being honored today, the world saw the future of the British monarchy, Prince William now the second in line to the throne and his son and heir, Prince George, along with Catherine, the Princess of Wales and Princess Charlotte, they of course, made a very careful decision to have their children be a part of this day included in the funeral of their great grandmother, something that they did with incredible poise and grace in an incredibly long day.

Here with Richard Quest. Richard, we've talked so much about history today. And I'm thinking yesterday, walking around everywhere with a sense of anticipation, I went by the war rooms, the war rooms of Winston Churchill. And it made me realize that we think of Winston Churchill as history, as black and white. And the person who bridged that time to now was in a very literal sense, a woman who brought history to color. I think about what she wore in her bright colors. And what we saw today, history and this thread through, she was that bridge.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN ANCHOR & ROYAL CORRESPONDENT: She was a bridge. And at the same time, she opened up so much for the future, she set in stone. What impressed me today, look, they'd obviously been rehearsing this and planning it for 20, 30 years. But that doesn't. That doesn't mean it wasn't perfect in the sense of the execution of it, nothing went wrong. And think of the complexity the number of times the casket had to be taken on and off, the number of miles it had to go, the number of troops 6,000 participants in the various processions, and it went off flawlessly.

BURNETT: You just set a number, 6,000. I mean, it's worth it's worth dwelling on that for a moment, right, 6,000 people involved in the stepping and the movements and they didn't make a mistake.

QUEST: The coordination to march to a band that is in front of you, where you've got to do a particular time of procession is very difficult. And they practiced it. They rehearse it in the streets at night. But even so I think, I think the thing that, so you have the magnitude which really struck me, but then you have the people and as I said earlier, these are people who came out not because some government told them to or because they were paid or because they knew that was politically correct to be seen there. They came out because they wanted to.

BURNETT: Oh, they did. And talking to so many of them, they wanted to be there. They were there with a somber sense of celebration if those words can be put together.

QUEST: That's exactly a phrase. That's exactly the phrase that we've seen over the last 10 days, somber celebrations, somber for the Queen, celebration for the next reign, because we do now have to push forward to the reign of King Charles.

BURNETT: And in that we saw that intimate moment at St. George's Chapel. The breaking of the wand, as you've talked about it, the symbol of the current head of household, breaking the wand over the coffin as a symbol of passing on such a simple thing with so much power.

QUEST: And it followed Charles, having laid the color on top of the class of the scepter and just look at the Prince of Wales or forgive me, the King's face etched with grief, pain, responsibility, all the things he summed it up in one sentence right at the beginning. I feel the weight of history. He said it at the Accession Council. And for the last 10 days we have witnessed this weight getting ever heavier on his shoulders.

BURNETT: Yes. At that moment we saw it as she always said, right, you have to see to believe. We saw and we completely and see that in his face.

[12:49:13]

Well, next, some of the other most powerful moments of what has been a truly extraordinary day here in London.

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[12:54:02]

DON LEMON, CNN HOST: Well, millions of people around the world just witnessed a royal funeral unlike any in our lifetimes. And we're going to take a look now at some of the most powerful moments from Queen Elizabeth funeral, here they are.

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