Every time she’s on screen it feels like she drew the short straw and got stuck with Margaret Thatcher. When I see her it feels like she’s thinking “fuck, I have to play this woman again, I hate her”. She’s woody and totally uncomfortable in MT’s skin.
…and the writing makes Thatcher look bad every single time, not even to pretense of balance.
Whatever you think about her policies, you can’t argue that she had a ghastly conversational voice and tempo. Anderson nails the way she spoke perfectly. I agree though that Morgan is very partisan in his treatmenbt of her.
Is she pretty much universally hated in the UK now or is she well remembered? Most people from there that I know believe she was just terrible. However, I do not know a representative pool of people.
Loved by some, hated by many, probably ambivilant by most.
She’s Trump (only not as ridiculous and more dangerous). Loved by the right, loathed by anyone remotely centre to left. A VERY divisive figure.
Oh, I think any actor would relish playing such a figure - even if you hate her, there’s a lot to get your teeth into.
I had a delivery yesterday and the driver was a man who I’d seen but never spoken to before. Once he’d finished the delivery he said - unprompted - ‘Thatcher would’ve had this covid done by now. She’d have had the army on the streets stopping people larking about. And asylum seekers? She’d have a couple of gunboats in the channel - shoot a few of them and that would stop them wanting to come here. Thatcher would have sorted all of it. Stay safe.’
And off he went.
Personally I despised her and her govt - not least for begetting this shower of shit we have now.
As for the writing in the Crown, I think they have been relatively sympathetic to her in what I’ve seen so far. The Balmoral episode for sure. Perhaps the op’s idea that Gillian Anderson loathes her is meant to convey some self-hatred in Thatcher? Dunno.
I think her voice is very good but her physicality is amazing. The 2 scenes of her descending the staircase at No 10 for the cabinet photographs were uncanny.
MiM
Msybe, but you play the character as she was.
I’m watching with a woman who skips the credit sequences, so my reaction to this thread was ‘wait. That’s Gillian Anderson?’
So, I guess it works for me. Lord knows she seems to have the mannerisms down pat.
Maybe, but she exagerates them to almost parody.
sure, but a realperson should be portrayes as she was not as people today see her.
I know, but it just feels she just wants the scene to end.
My feeling is that she is unable to get away for her own hatred of Thatcher. MT was a very powerful voice not a self-loathing one.
Maybe there’s a rush in the writing but (POSSIBLE SPOILERS) this is your favorite son was just a hack job. The writers have made not a single effort to show her in any positive light at all.
Thatcher was right around the time I became politically aware - as a PolSci major in college in the US. While I was aware of who she was and some of her policies, I obviously didn’t know enough about her speech and mannerisms. I recalled her speech being somewhat stilted, but not as extreme as GA’s portrayal. Of course, back then - and as a college student - we lacked the 24-hr news inundation, so i likely saw only short clips.
The physical and speech portrayal impressed me as ridiculously exaggerated - but I’ve heard many folk say it was spot on, so apparently I did not realize how odd she was.
When she died, I started a discussion about MT’s legacy:
How on earth can someone portray her other than as how they see her? There’s no secret store of Objective Knowledge About People that actors and only actors can access to inform their portrayal. All portrayals are necessarily subjective.
Your objection isn’t that she’s not being portrayed as she was; it’s that she’s not being portrayed as you see her.
If I get to play Stalin, I can simply do it by saying “kill more people” all the time in a bad Russian accent (and he was Georgian). MArgaret Thatcher is not an boscure figure from the bronce age she was PM when I (and Andreson) were kids. You don’t need a secret objective knowledge of anything, just fairness.
The writing is, I can only think on purpose, trying to show her in a bad light every time.
Her acting is stilted to the point of “I’m doing this to show i don’t thinks she’s nice”. It’s almost SNL.
I recall Thatcher once saying her greatest legacy was Tony Blair. Implying she shifted the compass of British politics so much to the right that Blair in order to get elected after 20 years of Labour being in opposition moved the party right in order to meet the new center.
Your analogy to Stalin is interesting, because you appear either to be suggesting that Anderson’s performance is as bad as that, or to be suggesting that Stalin shouldn’t be portrayed in a bad light.
Does Anderson perform Thatcher by repeating “Annihilate the unions!” all the time in a bad British accent?
Of course not. You likely see Thatcher in a very positive light, and the directors likely see her in a less flattering light, and it’s upsetting to see someone else’s more critical historical interpretation of a figure you admire.
That’s not a flaw in the interpretation.
I thought the portrayal was pretty good - although Thatcher only spoke that slowly in big speeches. In normal situations her speech was nowhere near as slow and deliberate as Anderson portrayed it.
I’m not sure it was particularly unkind. Thatcher made some painful and nasty decisions, some (but not all) of which eventually left Britain in a better place. Trouble was she did them uncaringly with little regard for vast swaths of the population who had to suffer through the transition. She governed for the people who voted for her and disregarded the people that didn’t. That is not a good leader. But without her I’m not sure Britain would have been as prosperous and modern as it was in following two decades.
It’s complicated - change could have come about slowly over two decades, or Thatcher’s way which was quickly and painfully in one. The pain however was put on the very people who also never got the full benefit, even now.
She adored Ronny Reagan. That was enough for me to hate her right there.
Yes, that’s my main criticism - they present her as speaking all the time in the voice and cadence she only used for public speaking, which makes her sound odd. But she wasn’t a nice person and Anderson’s portrayal of her is otherwise about as accurate as the portrayal of anyone in The Crown is.