16 November 2020 - Season 4 of "The Crown" introduces Thatcher and Diana
The Crown: the pleasure, and shock, of seeing the royals as truly human for once
Sarah Ditum (The Guardian, 15/11/2020)
The royals were always a good sign that I wasn’t at home. Other people’s houses had bits of regal memorabilia, royal weddings on the TV, copies of Majesty lying around. Mine didn’t and I grew up finding the whole monarchy business a bit absurd, even embarrassing – shouldn’t a grownup country have a more rational system for choosing its heads of state than relying on accidents of birth? The Diana circus passed me by, I skipped the 2002 golden jubilee and was irritated when the Kate-William wedding in 2011 turned Pippa Middleton’s bum into a figure of popular culture.
So I don’t really know how it happened that I became obsessed with The Crown, Netflix’s dramatisation of the reign of Elizabeth II. Series four will take us through from the tail end of the 1970s, with the arrival of Margaret Thatcher, to the early 1990s.
How Do You Play Margaret Thatcher? Like This
Anna Leszkiewicz (The New York Times, 12/11/2020)
Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first female prime minister, is one of the most important British figures of the 20th century — and yet these days, her distinctive public persona seems just as notorious as her inflexible right-wing policies.
Between 1979 and 1990, Thatcher delivered speeches to the public in a patronizing, slow voice, accompanied by a stern expression and under a thick starchy halo of hair. She had a very distinctive walk and relished her reputation as “the Iron Lady,” in public favoring a uniform of skirt suits with shoulder pads and a rigid handbag that seemed to be an extension of her arm.
These quirks and the pivotal role she played in the British 20th century mean many people have played Thatcher, in everything from films, plays, television shows and drag performances. In the fourth season of “The Crown,” which comes to Netflix on Sunday, Gillian Anderson takes on the challenge of inhabiting the outsize figure. We spoke to her and four other performers about their approach to playing Thatcher.
The Crown finally gets Princess Diana right – why did it take so long?
Adam White (The Independent, 15/11/2020)
Princess Diana was cinema. Rebellious, compassionate, tragic, she seemed to exist in widescreen. There was never any subtlety to her, from her fashion to her frankness to the public spectacle of her death. Yet despite living such a cinematic life, Diana’s story has never worked on screen. Netflix’s The Crown, which this season introduces Diana as played by actor Emma Corrin, is the latest to try. Early reviews have been kind, Corrin in particular drawing strong notices, but it is some miracle, with Diana’s chequered on-screen history suggesting hers is a story very easy to get wrong.
Corrin follows in the footsteps of Naomi Watts in the maligned 2013 biopic Diana, and precedes Kristen Stewart in an untitled Princess of Wales film to be released next year. After that, Elizabeth Debicki will take over from Corrin for the final two seasons of The Crown, which will launch sometime in 2022. Over the past few decades, there have also been a variety of treacly television movies, ones that consistently airbrushed her spikiness. Every portrayal, bar Corrin’s, has been a different shade of ghastly.
Prince Charles' pals claim Netflix's The Crown is 'exploiting the Royal family’s pain'
Brendan McFadden (The Mirror, 15/11/2020)
Close pals of the Prince have accused the streaming giant of ‘trolling the Royals on a Hollywood budget’ by presenting fiction as fact.
Several Palace insiders have expressed their concerns about the content of the show, which they claim has presented a twisted version of events.
One source told MailOnline: "This is drama and entertainment for commercial ends being made with no regard to the actual people involved who are having their lives hijacked and exploited."