Iron Lady crown fits
The fourth season of The Crown explores the uneasy relationship between two powerful women, finds Michael Idato.
Thatcher absolutely believed that she was making Britain great again. Whether you agree with her tactics and her policies, she felt passionately about the country.
THERE is amoment in screenwriter Peter Morgan’s 2006 film The Queen when the monarch, in conversation with her private secretary, quips: ‘‘I don’t measure the depth of a curtsy, I leave that to my sister.’’
That notion is put to the test early in the new season of Morgan’s television prequel, The Crown , when Elizabeth II
(Olivia Colman) comes face to face with her first female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson), and the latter descends to her knees.
That moment of genuflection, says Anderson, is revelatory. ‘‘It’s been written that no-one curtsied deeper than Margaret Thatcher, and she really believed in the monarchy,’’ Anderson says.
‘‘Regardless of what then transpired, she was brought up respecting royalty and being in awe of and slightly awkward around [the Queen] because of that reverence.’’
The fourth season of The Crown, streaming now on Netflix, takes its story into the 1980s, introducing Lady Diana Spencer (Emma Corrin), following Charles (Josh O’Connor) and Diana on their tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1983, and exploring key historic events such as the death of Lord Mountbatten in 1979, the Falklands War in 1982, and the breakdown of Charles and Diana’s marriage.
At the centre of the narrative, however, is the Queen’s relationship with her prime ministers, and in particular Thatcher – aka The Iron Lady – who was elected in May 1979 and was finally ousted by party infighting in November 1990.
For the role, Anderson pored over historical accounts of the relationship between monarch and primeminister. Some suggest that the two women did not get along.
‘‘Thatcher absolutely believed that she was making Britain great again,’’ Anderson says. ‘‘Whether you agree with her tactics and her policies, she felt
passionately about the country. And so does the Queen. I’d have to imagine that that would be recognised [between the two women].’’
Other accounts, she says, suggest the royal family felt Thatcher was vulgar. ‘‘There’s no ignoring the fact that there were a lot of similarities between them, and yet they respond to situations in a very, very different way,’’ Anderson says.
‘‘Over a long period of time that must have been challenging, to have to sit everyweek discussing things, knowing the other has a completely differing opinion. It’s a very complex relationship.’’
Anderson’s performance in The Crown is illuminating. She quickly takes on Thatcher’s very distinctive voice and walk and, in concertwith hair designer Kate Hall and costume designer Amy Roberts, her very specific hairstyle and wardrobe.
But it is a balance, Anderson says, beginning with a detailed study of the woman herself, which needed ultimately to find its life in something less based in mimicry.
‘‘Certainly in finding the walk, there are things like where to put one’s weight, which foot was turned slightly inwards, how she used her arm, how she held her bag,’’ Anderson says.
‘‘But there is also an element of the process of acting where we do have to let go and just trust that it’s there somewhere.’’
Clothes, too, made the woman, Anderson adds. As did her hair. ‘‘She narrowed in on that hairstyle very early in her political life and God only knows why she chose it and why she looked in the mirror and thought, ‘this is the one I’m going to keep’,’’ Anderson says.
‘‘And she was completely obsessed with clothes. [Was it] making the most of what little she had, or creating a look of being in a more prominent class [her father was a shop-owner]? Some have said it was more about armour, power dressing. And all of those things may be true.’’
Though Anderson comes into the world of The Crown as part of its fourth season, she has lived the longer journey of the series in her private life. Since 2016, she
has been in a relationship with Morgan, the show’s creator and screenwriter.
‘‘It’s such a huge part of his life,’’ Anderson says. ‘‘Eight years of the same routine every day; he gets up really, really early and he writes for a few hours. And pretty much any time he’s on a phone call, it’s to do with The Crown. It’s a really big part of his life, so it became a big part of my life from quite early on in our relationship.’’
As Thatcher enters the narrative, there are also some golden comedy moments, including scenes where the British leader is mortified at the thought of anyone other than herself unpacking her husband’s suitcase. And Morgan gives Thatcher absolute zingers. In one scene, she quips to husband Dennis: ‘‘I don’t need to look at you to show I’m listening and I don’t have time to be nice.’’
‘‘It’s on the page,’’ Anderson says. ‘‘And it made perfect sense. We don’t think of her as having humour, but if you watch her, she was incredibly quick-witted. I think she had a spectacular sense of humour. She may not have got jokes, but she understood how to make them.’’
Other moments reveal Thatcher’s anachronistic world view. That she still ironed her husband’s shirts and cooked his meals. And that she did not think women were ‘‘suited’’ to positions of power. In conversation with the Queen, Britain’s first female prime minister is incredulous at the notion that her first cabinet might include a woman.
‘‘She certainly had an opportunity to help women up the ladder, so to speak, and wasn’t really focused on that,’’ Anderson says. ‘‘We are quite used to the idea of seeing women in power, but back then it was unusual.
‘‘In terms of their degree of power, to come across another woman in a similar position, and to come at it from two completely different standpoints, I don’t think either [the Queen or Thatcher] had experience of workingwith women of that status before that.’’
Anderson is no stranger to female-led narratives but perhaps her most enduring, and impactful, performance was as FBI special agent Dana Scully in the American television series The X-Files.
‘‘Scully wasn’t the lead in any sense, it was a co-lead relationship [with David Duchovny’s character, Fox Mulder] but Chris Carter created one of the most iconic feminist characters that’s ever been on television,’’ Anderson says of the role.
‘‘Even though I was always incredibly grateful for the role, for the opportunity, I think it took hindsight to fully appreciate the gift that she was and the full impact that she has had.’’
The Crown season four is streaming now on Netflix.