Netflix’s The Crown will introduce two new adversarial pairings in Season 4, and a recently released teaser previewed the upcoming Princess Diana/Prince Charles debacle. The new trailer, however, zeroes in on what happens when there are “two women running the show,” which prompts Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, to cluck his tongue while Queen Elizabeth remarks that it might be exactly what England needs. That’s the introduction to Gillian Anderson as Prime Minister Margaret “Iron Lady” Thatcher, who will square off against the long-standing sensibilities of Olivia Colman’s royal incarnation.
The season picks up in the late 1970s with both the House of Windsor and Downing Street feeling fissures begin to appear, some as a direct result of Thatcher’s divisive policies as the country heads into the Falklands War. And of course, there’s a lot more brewing underneath the surface while the country’s press relishes highlighting the tensions between the two women, who have a lot in common but many differences as well. Gillian Anderson is grabbing onto those distinctive tones (which were partially down to throat lozenges) coming out of Thatcher’s mouth, and Colman’s pulling off the apparently-neutral-but-manuevering-behind-the-scenes vibe quite well.
Meanwhile, the Windsors would love to distract the public with a fairytale by marrying off 30-year-old Prince Charles (Josh Charles) to someone not-scandalous, which is where Emma Corrin’s Princess Diana comes into play. We all realize how that ended up (tragically), but at least we can guess that Helena Bonham Carter will continue to lighten the mood (relatively speaking) as the bawdy Princess Margaret.
The Crown Season 4 will stream on November 15.