If watching Anne Hathaway as the White Queen stirring up a potion made with “urine of the horsefly” makes you hungry, don’t worry: it was intentional. Tim Burton tells the L.A. Times that he used British celebrity chef Nigella Lawson as inspiration for the character.
“There’s this very beautiful cooking show host in England named Nigella Lawson and I quietly had her as my image for this character,” he said. “She’s really beautiful and she does all this cooking, but then there’s this glint in her eye and when you see it you go, ‘Oh, whoa, she’s like really… nuts.’ I mean in a good way. Well, maybe. I don’t know.”