There was a moment, making the fourth series of The Crown, when Gillian Anderson was in full costume as Margaret Thatcher and her partner, the series writer Peter Morgan, came to see her on set. "I smiled at him, as me, Gillian, smiling at her boyfriend, and he said, 'This is Thatcher! This smile is Thatcher!’" Anderson recalls, laughing. "And I’m like, no! This smile is me!"
Watching the show, you can understand the confusion. In the role, Anderson performs one of those metamorphoses where though she is entirely visible as herself beneath that great cloud of hair, she is also utterly transformed. For a while, the creative team had toyed with the idea of her wearing prosthetic teeth to capture the distinct shape of Thatcher’s mouth, but Anderson found them too cumbersome.
As the episodes unfold, you watch Thatcher running up against the snobbish judgement of the Royal Family, the patronising disdain of some of her Cabinet members. "I had to get to a point where it’s nothing to do with my opinions of her policies, of her actions," says Anderson. "It is only about her as a human being and her motivation as a politician and as a mother."
At times, she says she found herself questioning the portrayal – why wasn’t there more on the poll tax or Northern Ireland? But she was given no special treatment as the writer’s partner to shape her character. "For our own sanity, and actually for the benefit of the relationship, we had very clear boundaries," she says. "I am not going to comment on the script, but you are not allowed to comment on the performance!"
Accepting the part in the first place was a ‘no-brainer’. The challenge of the character, the sheer difficulty in playing someone so distinct in the collective imagination – "as daunting as it might be, as intimidating, you have to say yes," she says.
Full article: Bazaar