Harriet Walter on playing Margaret Thatcher: ‘I shifted to seeing her as a human being’
Harriet Walter on playing Margaret Thatcher: ‘I shifted to seeing her as a human being’
Share:
The star of new docudrama ‘Brian and Maggie’ sits down with Helen Coffey to talk modern politics, playing ‘horrible’ women, and why the roots of misogyny are set to dictate what we see on screen for a while yet. People are always saying I play horrible women!” says an amused Harriet Walter. It’s hard to argue with this assertion; after all, she has something of a track record. There’s the odious Fanny Dashwood in Ang Lee’s beloved 1996 Sense and Sensibility, and ice queen Lady Caroline Collingwood in the smash-hit HBO show Succession – not to mention her scene-stealing performances as Russian assassin Dasha in Killing Eve and emotionally distant mother Deborah Welton in Ted Lasso. In short, the veteran British actor has spent much of her 45-year career playing very nasty women indeed.
![[Harriet Walter is the latest illustrious actor to take on the Iron Lady]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/23/12/asdsdas75394_S1_Ep1_Embargoed-until-21st-January-2025-Brian-and-Maggie-S1-Ep1-copy.jpg)
“I sometimes imagine having a fantasy dinner party with them all...” she muses, and we both pause for a moment, picturing that surreal, painfully awkward social gathering with a kind of horrified fascination. “To me, they’re all horrible in very different ways.”.
![[Harriet Walter has gained more international recognition in her later years, with roles in ‘Killing Eve’ and ‘Succession’]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/24/10/newFile-1.jpg)
The latest in the lineup is a real humdinger: Margaret Thatcher. Walter plays her opposite Steve Coogan in a new two-part Channel 4 docudrama, Brian and Maggie, written by Olivier Award winner James Graham and directed by Stephen Frears (he of State of the Union and A Very English Scandal fame). Adapted from a chapter in Rob Burley’s 2023 book Why is This Lying Bastard Lying To Me? and based on real events, the show is a dramatisation of the game-changing 1989 televised interview between Thatcher and journalist Brian Walden, aired three days after the resignation of Nigel Lawson as chancellor. Thatcher visibly floundered under Walden’s unrelenting questioning, and the encounter is widely believed to have been instrumental in her subsequent political fall from grace: she resigned a year later.
![[Harriet Walter as Caroline Collingwood with her onscreen son Roman (Kieran Culkin) in ‘Succession’]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2021/12/03/15/kieran-culkin-caroline-collingwood.jpg)
