The Crown: The Official Podcast

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48 of the Commonwealth countries are committed to imposing a policy of sanctions on Pretoria to try and bring down the apartheid regime….

….I will have an opportunity to speak to Mrs Thatcher about all this in private, at the forthcoming Commonwealth heads of government meeting in The Bahamas.

Series intro

Welcome to The Crowm, the official podcast. I'm Edith Bowman, and this show will follow the fourth season of the Netflix original series The Crown episode by episode, taking you behind the scenes, speaking with many of the talented people involved and diving deep into the stories. 

Episode intro

Today, we're talking about episode eight, titled 48:1. 

At the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in The Bahamas 48 nations back sanctions on South Africa because of the apartheid regime. One country, the United Kingdom under Margaret Thatcher refuses to support sanctions, much to the annoyance of Elizabeth. The Queen and Thatcher come to blows over the issue, and their fallout becomes public knowledge after the story is leaked from inside the palace. 

Now we’ll cover specific events and scenes that feature in this episode so if you haven't watched episode eight yet I do it now or very soon. 

Edith v/o

Coming up later. So we'll hear from Gillian Anderson on finding her own Margaret Thatcher. 

Clip from Gillian

Gillian Anderson: They kept encouraging me to go overboard, to completely stretch to the parodic and then find a way to pull it back. 

Edith v/o

We'll also hear from head of research Annie Sulzberger

Clip from Annie

The articles come out and they go well beyond the South Africa issue, she finds her to be utterly lacking in compassion, divisive, and that she has destroyed the social fabric of this country.

Edith v/o

But first I spoke remotely with the director of this episode, Julian Gerald, and where else to start then with the return of a certain young Princess Elizabeth, Claire Foy. I asked Julian what it was like to welcome Claire, back to The Crown.

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Julian: It was just wonderful to have her back. And I think to me, that opening speech was such a key part of the reason why the queen behaves the way that she did. You needed somebody with the weight of Claire to deliver it. And if it was a new face doing it, I don't think it would have had the same impact. And obviously it was just lovely to see her. And I think it was mid-winter though…mid-winter in England pretending to be summer in Cape town. And she was in this flimsy dress and it was minus whatever it was. So I think she was going slightly blue as we were filming it, but it, yeah, it was wonderful to see. And obviously it’s a great treat to work with two Queens, I don't think any other director can say that can they?

There is a motto which has been born by many of my ancestors, a nibble motto: I serve…

…And My God bless all of you who are willing to share in it.

Julian: Absolutely, the queen is mad keen on the Commonwealth. And I hadn't completely realized why that was. And I think we hinted it at the end of the episode, but it is very much the legacy of her father. Things have changed so much with loss of empire and all the rest of it, but it was something her father who had a, a wider and greater array of countries under him. And I think she feels partly that it's a legacy that was handed on to her. And that it was, from her point of view, a very successful part of decolonization, I suppose. So she has this sort of loyalty to that, but at the same time she has this loyalty and has to do what the prime minister says. So she's in this terrible dilemma and obviously the apartheid, seems such a clear cut issue and makes such an interesting, juicy, dramatic conflict really.

Edith: I think as well you kind of see at that point, that, Thatcher underestimates her. 

05:03

Julian: Yes. I mean, I think that Thatcher was, obviously she is a great supporter of the monarchy. And this is not the early Thatcher, who's fairly self-confident and bullish to say the least at this point, and just expects the queen to do what she should do, as she sees it. And to some extent she has a point and obviously one of the fun and interesting things of this episode is these two very powerful figures, who've had this great history and seeing them come together almost like a Western for a shootout is what was one of the interesting things to why I wanted to do it.

05:39

Edith:  And that scene in particular, or that kind of collection of scenes where Thatcher refuses to back sanctions and there's real footage that, that really highlights the brutality that black South Africans are being subjected to. And then contrasting that you have Thatcher rejecting all these, so petty, these individual words, they're trying to be suggested to, to sign this agreement. It's a really clever kind of juxtaposition I think of what's going on. 

Julian: I'm really sort of interested in the way these International agreements are hammered out and this sort of horse trading over absurd words. And the absurdity of it as well is, is extraordinary isn't it? And then of course, to get to, uh the finish line and everyone seems to be happy and then she appears to go back on her word. That is, also I think quite powerful and obviously sets, sets the next train of events in motion.

Edith:  Moving on to, to working with Gillian in this role as Thatcher and you know, this character that's larger than life. Everybody has an opinion about Thatcher, but can you talk a little bit about working with Gillian and her portrayal of Thatcher and how, how you worked together on that for this episode?

07:02

Julain:  Gillian to me seems to be the most prepared actor I've ever worked with.

I mean, she, she literally seemed to know everything about the history, the manners and the hairstyle, everything really. So she was a fantastic font of knowledge. I thought I was fairly well-prepared. I mean, I think for both of us that BBC documentary series on the Thatcher years, which is, it was one of the best because it has so much footage and quite a lot of it when you're seeing different aspects of Thatcher. I think to play her is one of the hardest things to do because it's so often can end up as caricature and a bit spitting image and all the rest of it. So it is trying to find the light and shade and the nuance and the vulnerabilities, even though a lot of the time that's at the back. It's not shown, it's repressed or whatever. So I suppose that was part of the discussion of the way Gillian interacts with Olivia and the sort of disappointment she felt, terrible disappointment she felt that the queen could have done this because, uh, she didn’t see it coming at all.

Now we’ll hear more about Margaret Thatcher later on from the actor who plays her, Gillian Anderson. 

Next in order to further understand the conflict between Elizabeth and Thatcher in this episode, I sat down once more with the Crown's head of research Annie Sulzburger, and I began by asking her why the Commonwealth is so important to the queen.

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Annie: We have to remember that her power and authority is quite contained back home, but actually it really does exist in the Commonwealth. She can take an active role. She can sit and try to resolve conflict between two countries or to give another country a voice on an international stage when, if they were not part of this union, most people would ignore them.

Her 1947 speech where she declares the Commonwealth one of her life missions, it's not just because her father is overseeing this, you know, some would say sort of embarrassing retreat from empire to Commonwealth, but she, you know, she genuinely believes that that is the way that the world is going. We have to be more progressive. We don't own these countries anymore. They should be equal partners with us. She is thrilled when they have these moments of independence and she always has someone represent the Royal family in these independence day celebrations. And so she takes it very seriously. She loves traveling. She loves what she's learned from traveling and from experiencing different cultures.

That is something that Thatcher does not like, Thatcher has an inherent distrust of foreigners. She distrusts foreigners so much that she distrusts the foreign office. So she doesn't understand why people spend their time on foreign issues. 

Edith: Wow. 

09:57

The Commonwealth? Ridiculous waste of time, ridiculous organization. Worse, morally offensive. Why we allow our queen to fraternize with countries like Uganda, Malawi, Nigeria, Swaziland, unstable countries, unstable despotism with a polling human rights records and calling them family….

Annie:  Elizabeth sees these relationships as affecting change, but Thatcher just finds it utterly useless. And she thinks that these meetings in particular are huge waste of cash for countries that don't have the cash, for essentially these people to go on holiday. She had another acronym for CHOGM and it was ‘compulsory handouts for greedy mendicants.’ Yeah. 

Edith:Wow. 

Annie: Yeah. Yeah. And her husband had a much worse one, which I can not state. And then, so all of this is heightened by the issue of South Africa. So in 1985, they have this Commonwealth meaning South Africa's been out of the Commonwealth since ‘61, because of apartheid. They have exiled them essentially, by saying we don't believe in a institutionalized racist system, which is what it was. If you want to be part of this Commonwealth, your style of government has to shift. And recognize that black citizens have the equal rights of white citizens. So they've been out since 61, nothing has changed. And so they've now gone into economic sanctions. 

So in this vote it’s 48 to one. Every other country is saying yes to economic sanctions. We need to pressure them any possible way we can to drop apartheid. Thatcher is the one no-vote and she says no for a couple of reasons. Her first reason she claims is; let's say you do, that sanctions work. You put sanctions in in a year or two later, apartheid falls. Black South Africans are inheriting an economic wasteland if you do that. So what are you giving them? That's the sort of above board version. What is most likely at the center of this is that South Africa trades quite heavily with Britain. And she knows in an already incredibly high unemployment for her, I mean, and by this point, I think it's between two, just under 3, it will affect her balance sheets. She says, no.

13:07

Nothing useful can be achieved by sanctions…. 

…..Yes. The Commonwealth. 

The embarrassment and the anger that that causes Elizabeth, that only nation that is holding out is her own is, as we see in the episode, it's sort of a never before seen moment for her. And she feels utterly betrayed and she tells Commonwealth leaders at the meeting, she feels utterly betrayed by it.

So that is the start of the showdown in episode eight that leads to, what we think, after all the research is, you know, a pretty honest depiction of Elizabeth's views of her prime minister. 

Edith: It’s a really interesting discussion as well, the relationship between the palace and the press.

Annie: The story was out there already that she was angry.

Edith: Yeah. 

Annie: So, it wasn't like she was instigating this discussion. 

Edith: There were rumours flying around 

Annie: There were rumors, there were front page articles. Everybody knows, everybody knows. She's watching footage of black South Africans being violently brutalized in townships all over. There's a clear kind of moment I think, where she just says I can't stay silent. So we don't know how it happened. We don't know if she said twist the knife, you know, she pressed the red button, whatever it was, or she just sort of gave it a wink and a nod and made it so. Or Michael Shay was so infuriated on her behalf that he took the step on his own. Most people claim Michael Shay leaked them, but why he would leak them after so many years of dutiful service to the queen is really the question we asked ourselves, when writing this.

Edith: Did he ever talk about it?

Annie: I don’t think he ever really did. He left quietly the next year, I mean, funnily enough, he's the cousin of one of our writers, Johnny, but he passed away before we, he had ever knew that this would ever come into his life. But, uh, from what I understand from speaking to the people who were civil servants under Thatcher, you know, they were very happy to accept that Michael Shay spoke out of turn, but that didn't mean that they didn't believe what he was saying was the Queen's opinions. So there were two articles that came out in the Sunday times and between the CHOGM meeting, which was October 85 and the articles that come out in July ‘86, we've compressed that time because really just what happens is the building and building of, if you don't back sanctions, the Commonwealth will disband.

Edith: Which is what she wanted.

Annie: Yeah. I mean, she just, ultimately just didn't care about the consequences to the Commonwealth. It was just like an annoyance more than anything, but for obviously for Elizabeth, that would have been utterly heartbreaking. So much of the Commonwealth is black Africa. And to turn their backs on that, for her to not be able to push her own prime minister in some way into a position to acknowledge that this is just a moral issue, screw the economic consequences of sanctions for either country. Really.

Edith: Yeah. 

Annie: This is a moral issue. Apartheid is immoral, we will not allow this to continue and we will do everything in our efforts to make it stop. The articles come out and they go well beyond the South Africa issue.

It has been an eventful week for Buckingham palace. Elizabeth II, well-intentioned apolitical figurehead has been dragged into a messy row over South Africa because of the stubbornness and insensitivity…

…That's what it says. 

Annie: It is clear that she finds her to be utterly lacking in compassion, divisive, and that she has destroyed the social fabric of this country. She has been brutal in her treatment of the mining community to the point where there's now just such a distrust between those sorts of industrial communities and the government that you don't know if you could ever actually repair it.

And so, yeah, it's a damning indictment of a woman's career that she believes has done irreparable damage to her country. And the big question that we'll never really get answered is was she behind it? Did she tacitly approve the idea of maybe Shae becoming a little bit chatty? Or, really chatty with journalists? It's never been repeated. This has never happened before. It feels like a desperate woman who truly cannot fathom the immorality of the government that is in her name, and decides the only way to show the members of the Commonwealth and the black community that I care and that not all of us agree with the sort of principles and policies of my government was to, to leak it. 

Edith: Did that have an effect on the relationship between the press and the monarchy from that point as well? Did it shift anything again? There's almost these points in history where that relationship, it changes and it shifts in certain ways. Did that point change anything? 

Annie: Funnily enough I haven't really found much evidence that this was one. I think the big moments were in series three for example, when Phillip does the documentary, that was the Royal family, making a decision to let them in. That was the biggest mistake they ever made because they said, we're going to show that we're average people. You're not average people. Don't pretend to be average people. And guess what? The mystique is gone if you claim to be average people. So then it was fair game. It's like, you let us into your life. Then we have a right to it now, and really the big shift after that will be Diana and Charles planting stories to get at each other. 

Edith: Oh, wow, that happened?

Annie: Yeah, that will be the big shift then I think in, in sort of tabloid journalism in the eighties and nineties. But this feels uniquely separate.

And now it’s time to speak to The Crown’s very own Margaret Thatcher. I was lucky enough to be joined remotely by the fabulous Gillian Anderson, and I asked her, what was the appeal of playing such an iconic woman? 

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Gillian: Well, I like a challenge and it seemed it honestly seemed like one of those roles that you can't say no to, she's such a complex character.

And there was so much to dive into. And I felt like there were enough similarities between our facial features and I felt like I could get close to her voice. And if any of those things I didn't feel confident with, I probably wouldn't have confidently said, okay, I'll do it. I'll risk my life in this way, and the future of my career. But um, but it seemed like it made sense. I got it when I was asked if I could. And so from that point on, it was, it was just a joyful challenge. 

Edith: Where did you start? Because everybody has an opinion of her. Was it easy to almost get rid of that, to start with, to find your experience of her I guess?

Gillian: Yeah, and, and I think that was really essential to, to let go of any preconceived ideas or anybody's opinions ringing in my ears about it. I mean, I grew up in the UK, but left in ‘79 the year that she got in. And so I didn't have many of my own opinions, but I did know of other's opinions and quite strong ones. And so it really did feel necessary to start from scratch almost, and start with her childhood, start with who her parents were, what kind of environment she grew up in, what led to her determination and her building of self and her clarity of vision. And, and there's a lot there. I mean, obviously she's not just the first female British prime minister, but in for so long and was so divisive. And so there's a lot of material out there and we've fortunately got the most extraordinary researchers.

Edith: Well actually that’s, I think that's the brilliant thing about the way that Peter has written Thatcher is that he's very cleverly almost removed all the preconceptions as well. In terms of you are experiencing her journey, really.

Gillian:  One can do as much research as one wants, but at the end of the day, what you have to work with are the scripts and, and how the series, the scripts, Peter, is wanting to tell the story and wanting to tell the story of Thatcher through the lens of the Queen and the crown.

That's ultimately what this is. So it's much more of a study of, of her as a career woman and study of her as a mother, as much as it is, study of her and how she laid out her policies or the impact that she necessarily had on the nation. That was interesting from the get-go and it certainly, therefore also the relationship between her and the queen that you see majoritively through the weekly audiences, which over an 11 year period of time would have been many. 

And there's a lot written about their relationship. There was a lot written about Thatcher's view of, of royalty, of monarchy and also the complexity of their relationship based on the fact that there are, on the one hand, stark similarities, but also many, many differences in how they handle situations, and that makes good drama. 

We cannot let the values of the past distract us from the realities of the present, particularly where Britain's economic interests are concerned…

…Think of it as a question.

Edith: Collaboration is, seems like it's such a big part of this crown family in particular with, with Amy and Sid in the costume department and then the amazing hair and makeup as well to find your right silhouette, because I know that that's a big thing about this idea of the silhouette that you can. Was it a bit of a journey to that, or was it quite easy to find your physical Thatcher, I guess?

Gillian:  It was a journey for all of us, both collectively and individually, I think. And certainly when we started, I mean, months in advance, it seems like, you know, I had the first wig meeting.

And, uh, discussing the different colours that would be weaved into the wig, that kind of stuff, you know, but everybody pouring a lot of time and thought into it. And when we did our first camera test, it seems to me that, if I recall, the wig was too big and too dense. And the makeup was too heavy for HD, for 4K, I think it is. And I was just, you know, watching those camera tests like what am I doing? So, so, you know, trying to get the walk right, and hold my face right. And all those kinds of things and whether or not to use teeth, and trying in the prosthetic, literally like, like a monster with the actual prosthetic, I mean, went to let you know cartoon.

And then I was trying blue tack stuck up in my, in my lip to see whether that was going to do the trick. None of it worked. It just turned out that I needed to act. And so, um, but it was quite reassuring actually that as they were in a particular place in their journey with it, so was I, and so it felt like, okay, all right, well, I can relax a little bit. We're all in this together. And we're all in the middle of the stage of trying to figure it out. So the fact that I look like a doofus on screen doesn't really matter because I just have to trust that I'll keep working at it and I'll get there eventually.

Edith:  It takes your breath away when you see you on screen for the first time, it really does. And the voice as well, was that easy to get? Cos she can be very, um, powerful with her voice in terms of, this is what I think, and this is what I believe, but it also doesn't really show any emotion. 

Gillian: Part of the process of finding the voice was attempting to find one that, that wasn't changing throughout, even though it did shift, that felt recognizable, but that, that also didn't feel parodic. During the process of working with people on it they kept encouraging me to go overboard with her and to go, you know, because I I've actually discovered that I'm actually quite a shy actor. It takes quite a lot to release stuff inside me. And so, when it's far from who I am. And so they kept trying to get me to, to completely stretch to the parodic, and then find a way to pull it back. And so I think that's where, where we settled on or where I settled on, but it took a while. I'm not even sure that I entirely had it in the first few days of filming. I think I might've fixed some things in post production. But that is the joy of post-production. 

Edith:  How would you describe the arc that she has as a character across the season, as a human, as a woman?

Gillian:  I think at the beginning, both from what I've read and also what shows up in the show is that she started out a little bit wrong footed. And so I think she found her sea legs properly when I think she felt properly supported, and then gathered confidence. But when I look at her speeches, even the first time that she spoke at a party conference, the degree of confidence in this woman was extraordinary. And, you know, as leader of the opposition, she was an extraordinary speaker and had incredible confidence. So it is interesting that at the point that she actually becomes prime minister, she has such an experience of undermining and lack of support for the policies that she wants to see through. 

And so I think that the first few years was a real battle for her up until the Falklands. And the level of support suddenly for her, I think shifted exponentially. And so I think she sailed on that high for some time before it all started to come down around her, particularly to do with Europe. But so it feels like there's a, there is a definite beginning, a middle and an end and quite a dramatic end. So she grew a huge amount during that decade.

Edith:  Would you say that kind of almost mirrors her relationship with the queen in a way as well? 

Gillian:  Well, it depends what you read because some points to a fractured relationship from the beginning. There's certainly things written about the Royal family considering her vulgar and that she, it was pretend, it was an act somehow and it wasn't genuine. But something really interesting is that neither the queen, nor Thatcher would have had to deal with women of the stature that the other was at. And so certainly not that, I mean, she was a, Thathcer was a, a scientist and a barrister and a self-made woman. And I'm not sure whether someone like that would have come before the queen before. Thatcher is good at answering to no one. And so I can see clearly how there would be conflict along the way, just in terms of personality and how they each dealt with situations. And by, by the Queen's nature, she, her very role is to sit back and to not act. And Thatcher cannot help herself. I mean, she is, that's what she does. She takes action. So, and so I think by the time what we see in episode eight in South Africa and the sanctions that the queen was asking her to sign off on, they'd had a good period of time of complexity prior to that.

From what we understand, whatever the truth of the matter is about the Queen's knowledge of that article, or not, as I understand, it was a huge betrayal. 

Uncaring, confrontational and socially divisive. That's how these sources so close to the queen described me…

Edith:  But you know, it's interesting because the severity of their relationship as the season goes through, and also the severity of the situation, you know, we have Thatcher on the Commonwealth and she's scathing of it and her approach and thoughts on apartheid. And these are really serious issues and on the Falklands war, and it's, it's almost her blinkeredness sometimes to these situations, and like you say, no one can really tell her what to do.

Gillian: Well I think that that, that was ultimately her downfall. It was how blinkered she was. She just stopped listening. I mean, even if she was ever listening, but if she, you know, just bloody-minded.

33:22

Edith:  You mentioned sea legs earlier, which just made me think of that brilliant little conversation that she has with Denis on the phone and she mentions the Britannia and says ‘I do the like the boat’ and he goes ‘It’s a yacht’. Again, it's thess tiny little moments allow us as an audience to just take a breath. 

Gillian: Yeah. That's ultimately one of the things that is Peter's great gift is being able to weave these intricacies and the minutiae of the relationship and conversation out of thin air that really adds to, highlights, but informs on such deep levels, the nature of, of the individuals and of their relationships. And you get so much out of the relationship between DT, Denis Thatcher, and Margaret Thatcher in the second episode, I mean, just the, the, the hallways scenes, the bedroom scene and you just, you get such a fantastic snippet of their care and the, the power balance in the relationship. And, but there's so much humour, so much humour in it.

34:30

Edith: The audiences, I'd love to watch them back to back. From right through the season of all the audiences with the queen and Thatcher. Watching you and Olivia together in those scenes is just, it's so great to watch. Would you mind talking a little bit about working with Olivia and filming those scenes and what it was like for you across the season as well in the different dynamics that they, that the relationship was at as well?

Gillian: A lot of schedule depends on location, location availability. And so we ended up, there were two or three days of audiences that would have covered a few episodes of at least a couple of episodes of audiences, book-ending the episode. 

Edith: That is bonkers!

Gillian:  It is bonkers, but it's just the nature of what you, what one has to do. 

Edith: Yeah, schedules and stuff

Gillain: So, yeah so trying to make each one different and move it forward energetically and holding on to everything that has transpired before, et cetera, et cetera. So that is definitely a challenge. And the thing that is said quite frequently about what happened in those audiences, which is there's no documentation of them and there never has been and there never will be, and they're not even meant to speak about them with, their, with their spouses, but apparently Thatcher was given to lecturing and that is perfectly believable, but you know, she coming in and, and lecturing the queen and that she would show up 10 or 15 minutes early and prepare, and the curtsy, Thatcher was famous for the depth of her curtsy. And that that was an indication of her real deference of belief in constitutional monarchy and respect for it. 

So there's delightful information out there about specifics and yet, she wanted to be able to get on with her job and for the queen to be, to get on with her job, which is separate from hers running the country. And so there always needed to be an element of that. It's not chit-chat, it's not sisters in conversation. It is very much Thatcher talking at the queen.

And I don't want people's pity or charity or compassion, nothing would insult me more.

My goal is to change this country from being dependent to self-reliant. And I think in that I am succeeding.

I'm Edith Bowman and my special thanks to our guests. In this episode, Julian Jarrold, Annie Salzburger, and Gillian Anderson. 

The Crown, the official podcast is produced by Netflix and Somethin’ Else in association with Leftbank pictures

Join us next time when we go behind the scenes of the penultimate episode of season four, titled Avalanche. After narrowly escaping an avalanche while skiing, Charles decides he must free himself from his unhappy marriage.

Diana, however, has other ideas and becomes determined to save it.

CLIP

I still want to make this marriage work with all my heart. 

Then why have you broken your vows, as I understand you have.

Because, sometimes you don't know how you feel about something until you've nearly had it taken away.

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