Margaret Thatcher to be played by Harriet Walter in new Channel 4 drama
Harriet Walter has become the latest acting heavyweight to play Margaret Thatcher as she is revealed to be starring in a new show about the former prime minister.
The Olivier, Tony and Emmy nominated Succession star, 73, will be portraying the Iron Lady in new drama Brian and Margaret alongside co-star two-time Academy Award nominee Steve Coogan for Channel 4.
The two-part series, unveiled just three weeks before the general election, will be a dramatisation of the story behind Thatcher’s final TV interview with Brian Walden, the late Labour MP turned broadcaster.
The 1989 45-minute showdown remains one of the most well-known television political exchanges and ultimately set in motion a series of events that ended with Thatcher’s resignation a year later.
It focused on a line of questioning about the recent resignation of Nigel Lawson, Thatcher’s chancellor, and ultimately led to a “devastating exposé” that was watched by three million people at the time, according to Thatcher biographer John Campbell.
The pair, who were friendly beforehand, famously never spoke again after the exchange.
Speaking after the news of her casting, Walter joked that she “has to travel a great distance to reach Maggie Thatcher” because of her own political beliefs.
“But with James Graham’s brilliant script, Stephen Frears to guide me, and Steve Coogan to accompany me, I have the dream team to help me achieve it,” she added.
The actress was Emmy nominated for her role as the ex-wife of Succession’s Logan Roy and has also starred in The Crown as Clementine Churchill, in Killing Eve as Dasha and in Downton Abbey as Lady Shackleton.
Her role as Thatcher comes after Gillian Anderson won an Emmy for her portrayal of the former PM in The Crown in 2021 and Meryl Streep won an Oscar for her depiction 12 years ago in The Iron Lady.
Others that have played the formidable role include Lindsay Duncan, Andrea Riseborough and Lesley Manville in Stephen Frears’ film The Queen.
The new series, directed by Philomena and Dangerous Liaisons’ Frears, will also “ask whether the slow death of full-length political TV interviews puts modern democracy at risk,” according to Channel 4’s description.
Coogan echoed this sentiment, saying that it is “great to be telling a story from the era of the sorely missed forensic interview – two giants of their time locking horns to determine the future of Britain.”
After Walden’s death in 2019, former MP William Hague wrote in The Telegraph that “his passing is also a time to lament the art of the lengthy, searching, forensic and ultimately revealing television interview, which disappeared as his career came to an end.”
Speaking after the announcement, Coogan added: “To act opposite Harriet Walter with a script by James Graham directed by Stephen Frears is a challenge of the very best kind!”
The BBC Studios-backed production company Baby Cow will produce the series, with chief executive Sarah Monteith previously describing the show as one that would “say something about the nature of debate in our country”.
Similarly to Netflix’s popular film Scoop, about the infamous Prince Andrew Newsnight interview, the new show is based on two chapters from a book by a former BBC producer, Rob Burley’s Why Is This Lying Bastard Lying to Me?
