Meet The Crown's Iron Lady – Gillian Anderson Cast as Margaret Thatcher in Netflix Hit: Report
The Crown may be adding an extra dose of star power.
Gillian Anderson has been tapped to play British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for the fourth season of the Netflix hit, according to the Sunday Times. The Hollywood Reporter adds that sources say negotiations have been going on since April, but the deal is still not finalized.
It’s unclear if Anderson’s character, who served as Britain’s first female prime minister from 1979 to 1990, will appear in both seasons 3 and 4, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The 50-year-old actress’ previous TV work includes The X-Files, The Fall and Sex Education. Off-screen, Anderson has been linked with The Crown‘s creator, Peter Morgan.
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Although Thatcher is a new character to the series, Anderson will still be joining plenty of fresh faces. Each season of The Crown, following Queen Elizabeth‘s reign, runs the course of about a decade in the characters’ lives. After the first two seasons wrapped, the cast has been switched out completely.
Olivia Colman of The Night Manager and Tobias Mezies of Outlander will play Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip for seasons 3 and 4, replacing Claire Foy and Matt Smith.
Helena Bonham Carter will take over for Vanessa Kirby as Princess Margaret (despite Carter’s concerns about her accent not being posh enough!), and Ben Daniels will be play her husband, Lord Snowdon, instead of Matthew Goode.
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British actress Emerald Fennell is joining the cast as Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, formerly Camilla Shand, for the show’s third season.
The third season of the show began filming in July 2018 and will be released sometime in 2019, according to the BBC. It’s unclear exactly what year it will be in the life of Colman’s Queen when the show picks up again. One of the few major events that has been confirmed for the upcoming season is the breakdown of Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon’s relationship. (They divorced in 1978.) The last episode of season two took place in 1964.
