The Crown series four trailer reveals frosty exchange between the Queen and Margaret Thatcher

Lizzie Edmonds @lizzieedmoCelebrity Correspondent

30 October 2020

Olivia Colman’s Queen Elizabeth II and Gillian Anderson’s Margaret Thatcher clash in a frosty exchange in the official trailer for The Crown season 4.

The trailer for the fourth season of the wildly popular Netflix show - which launches on November 15 - was released to the delight of fans.

Two prominent storylines will be the relationship between the Monarch and the Head of State and the marriage of Prince Charles, played by Josh O’Connor, and Lady Diana Spencer, played by Emma Corrin.

The season starts in the late 1970s, when Thatcher was elected.

Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II

The series follows how the politics of Britain’s first female Prime Minister cause tension in the royal household - which only grow with the start of the Falklands War in 1982.

In the clip, Thatcher tells the royal: “I think we have enough respect for one another personally to ask ourselves some of the bigger questions. Woman to woman.”

“Joblessness, recession, crises… It’s a dangerous game to make enemies left, right and centre,” the Queen says of Thatcher’s government.

The Prime Minister answers that she is “comfortable” with having enemies.

The Crown writer Peter Morgan said he wanted to explore the relationship between the Queen and Thatcher.

Gillian Anderson’s Margaret Thatcher

He said: “It could be said that they are two very similar women, born only months apart. They are very much defined by the Second World War, by a sense of a sense of frugality, hard work, commitment, Christianity and so much more. It was a commonly held piece of wisdom that the Queen and Thatcher didn’t get on. I think there was probably a lot of respect. But they also had many differences, it was really fun exploring their differences and their similarities. I also get a chance to explore them both as mothers. Writing Thatcher and the Queen as mothers was probably an angle that no one has explored before. But it yielded one of my favourite episodes in the season.”

Meanwhile, the Monarch is pre-occupied with finding a wife for her son Prince Charles who remains unmarried at 30.

Lady Diana Spencer is chosen as a suitable bride, with the couple marrying in a seemingly fairytale wedding in July 1981. The couple’s difficult relationship and Diana’s struggles within the royal family are brought to life in this series.

The Crown: Season 4 Filming - In pictures

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The clip was the first time fans heard the voice of Anderson’s Thatcher and Corrin’s Princess Diana.

On writing Princess Diana, Peter said “Diana now has a historical perspective. I am really conscious of that. I really don’t want to get too close so that what I do is journalistic. I really want to make sure that there is enough distance so that if you tell the story of Diana it can almost be something else. It can have metaphorical resonance.”

The trailer also features other stars of the fourth season - including Helena Bonham Carter as Princess Margaret, Tobias Menzies as The Duke of Edinburgh, Erin Doherty as Princess Anne, Emerald Fennell as Camilla Parker Bowles, Marion Bailey as the Queen Mother, Georgie Glen as Lady Fermoy, Tom Byrne as Prince Andrew, Angue Imrie as Prince Edward, and Charles Dance as Lord Mountbatten.