The Crown season 4 will follow the royal family throughout the 1980s, when Prince Charles married Princess Diana and Queen Elizabeth dealt with a new leader, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Olivia Colman is reprising her role as the monarch with Gillian Anderson playing the Iron Lady.
According to Screen Rant, The Crown season 4 could potentially play out Anderson's Thatcher as the new villain in this royal drama. The first trailer for the new season hinted of Thatcher's rigid and unrelenting views.
In real life, Queen Elizabeth and her first female prime minister reportedly had a complicated relationship. According to the Daily Beast, although the two women were almost of the same age, they had very different backgrounds and beliefs.
Thatcher was Queen Elizabeth's longest-serving prime minister for 11 years but staff members of the palace said that their relationship had been stiff and prickly from the beginning. According to royal biographers, Thatcher often asked to drink a bottle of whiskey before her weekly meetings with the monarch so she could relax. Their tension apparently came to a point where both women's staff made sure that the Queen and the prime minister rarely attended events together.
For all the protocols surrounding her life and reign, Queen Elizabeth apparently found Thatcher too meticulous and too dutiful. It also allegedly bothered the Queen that Thatcher would curtsy lower than what was necessary that she almost sat on the floor.
Thatcher, however, apparently wrote praises for Queen Elizabeth in her memoirs. She debunked the rumored clashes between her and the monarch as purely made up stories because they were two powerful women.
The Crown fans, however, are already anticipating the tension between Queen Elizabeth and Thatcher. After seeing the teaser from Netflix, some said that it will probably be hard to keep liking Anderson if she's going to be Thatcher in the royal drama. Another royal fan said on Twitter that Anderson as the prime minister has her "feeling very bad things."
Anderson acknowledged in an interview that there was so much pressure for her to play the Iron Lady. The actress said that there have been several conflicting opinions about Thatcher as a person and politician, who received both hate and admiration from the public.
The Crown season 4 will launch on the streaming platform on Nov. 15. Also in the cast are Tobias Menzies as Prince Philip, Josh O'Connor as Prince Charles, Helena Bonham-Carter as Princess Margaret and Emma Corrin as Princess Diana.
