Gillian Anderson joins The Crown season 4 cast as Margaret “The Iron Lady” Thatcher, Great Britain's first female prime minister. Nonetheless, the two stayed in touch and married on Dec. 13, 1951. Her father's religious devotion and interest in politics, no doubt, influenced Thatcher's views and career path as an adult. How ‘The Crown’ dishes on Margaret Thatcher and Princess Diana in its food scenes By Shinan Govani Contributing Columnist Fri., Nov. 27, 2020 timer 5 min. Her husband bristled when she became too powerful. Those versed in feminism’s sartorial history theorized that Melania’s choice to wear a pussy-bow blouse to her husband’s debate was a secret feminist commentary on the “grab her by the pussy” sexual assault scandal. And the same challenges writers face when portraying conservative women on narrative television extend to the way in which the media covers these women in real time. Such a shame.” Similarly, the patriarchal figures who fight the feminists in Mrs. America—or even put down Schlafly—never get moments of grace or humanization. Gillian Anderson will be stepping into the shoes of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Season 4 of “The Crown” on Netflix. (Marissa Mooney) By Yvonne Villarreal Staff Writer Margaret Thatcher, left, and Gillian Anderson portraying her in a scene from the fourth season of The Crown. Digital It was a move that galvanised a nation, united in a patriotic fervor and single belief that Britain was still a major player to be reckoned with on the world stage. She graduated Oxford in 1947 with a chemistry degree, having specialized in X-ray crystallography while under the supervision of Dorothy Hodgkin, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist. Protests were country-wide and many of the bigger cities saw violence and riots, The Independent reported. Images of violent clashes between strikers and police were beamed around the world. As a world figure she became a colossus, but by her third term in office the cracks were beginning to show and former loyalties turning against her until, eventually, she perhaps stayed just a little too long and went out on a whimper rather than a bang. Many people began to see her as an enemy of the health and wellbeing of the nation's future, and the phrase "Mrs. Thatcher, milk snatcher" was born. But the show softens these moments by suggesting that Thatcher suffered at the hands of the patriarchy herself, even if she usually wouldn’t admit it. Thatcher's popularity in her Cabinet role continued to decline when she abolished free milk for school children over seven years old as part of the government's broader effort to cut spending. (The United States is the only developed country that does not offer parental leave and one of the few that does not offer universal childcare. Then, in the 1950 and 1951 general elections, she was the Conservative candidate for a Labour seat in Parliament. In 1948 she applied for a job at Imperial Chemical Industries, but was denied because she was "headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated," according to a BBC article. Though the Prime Minister was known to shed a tear or two during her 11 years leading the United Kingdom, the show leans heavily on several scenes of the woman who came to be known as the “Iron Lady” overcome by emotion. She was a determined student, and after attending grammar school on a scholarship, was granted admission to Oxford in 1943 — an ambition still firmly out of reach of most women in the years after World War II. Thank you for reading TIME. She allied herself with homophobes and the KKK (decisions that are touched on but never truly reckoned with in that show). A complex portrayal is almost always preferable to a flat character, present only to be pilloried by the hero. Unperturbed, she continued her career as a chemist while satisfying her appetite for politics by joining the local Conservative Association. The excellent Netflix series “The Crown” launched its fourth season yesterday, with Scully herself, Gillian Anderson, delivering a brilliant portrayal of “the Iron Lady,” Margaret Thatcher. National pride was at the center of a pivotal moment in Thatcher's leadership. But Thatcher proves a more difficult figure for the series to pin down. The American cruise missiles based at Greenham Common, the use of British Royal Air Force bases for U.S. aircraft to bomb Libya; all this played into the hands of those accusing Thatcher of being a puppet of the United States. In real life, Thatcher’s legacy is polarizing, to say the least. Finally, in 1959, after a challenging campaign, Thatcher was elected as the Conservative MP for the county of Finchley. But when she clashed with the unions in 1984 over the closure of unprofitable coal pits, it was a confrontation of epic proportions, and one she intended to win. It cannot be denied that she broke the mould when she came to power, only to be criticised by some for not governing more like a woman and by others for not being more like a man. Following the invasion of the Falkland Islands by Argentina in 1982, and with diplomatic channels exhausted, the prime minister took the momentous decision to create and deploy a task force of thousands to sail down to the South Atlantic to retake the British Overseas Territory. In turn, feminists are criticized if they question the political views of a woman. Some media outlets have, in recent years and months, struggled with how to frame conservative women. 771k Followers, 18 Following, 277 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from The Crown (@thecrownnetflix) When it comes to conservative characters—male or female—writers tend to vilify or sympathize, respectively. But it came at a price: over 250 British dead that were mourned by a nation. The fourth season covers the time period between 1979 and 1990, is set during Margaret Thatcher's premiership, and introduces Lady Diana Spencer. One of them follows a man who suffers under Thatcher’s social programs, unable to find work so that he might get partial custody of his children. The Crown Struggles With Portrayal of Margaret Thatcher | Time Gillian Anderson made her first appearance portraying Margaret Thatcher in The Crown while filming the show's fourth season earlier this month. In the show, she casts the sexual harassment she experiences as flattery in order to occupy the corridors of power with men. Like us on Facebook to see similar stories, 'We will not stop until there is justice': Over a thousand in Chicago gather to remember Adam Toledo, boy killed in police shooting, Canadian province of Ontario strengthens, prolongs Covid lockdown. But she persisted, and as Heath's government struggled through the 1970s, Thatcher began to emerge as a political leader. Related: Margaret Thatcher: Why powerful women face more stress. While her advocacy of laissez-faire economics and individual self-determination lives on as the right-wing philosophy we call Thatcherism, her real legacy is in how she transformed Britain — even if we're still debating if it was for better or worse. In 1979, Thatcher became not only Britain's first woman prime minister, but the first woman to govern a western democracy. At this point in history, as time has buffed away the spiky parts of her character to something resembling sainthood, history and memory have made it hard to view Diana with any sort of nuance. The Crown Season 4 brings with it a whole lot of change for Queen Elizabeth II’s family and, more importantly, the United Kingdom. Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first female Prime Minister—who served from 1979 to 1990, making her the longest serving PM in the 20th century—was a polarizing figure in life and in death. Subscribe for just 99¢. Trump has directly compared her to Ruth Bader Ginsburg—a woman who began her legal career arguing for equal rights for working women in front of the Supreme Court—as if the fact that they are both accomplished women negates the fact of their starkly opposed social and legal views. She struggles personally because she can’t form partnerships with other women without betraying her ideals.