Harriet Walter: 'I think Margaret Thatcher would have detested me'

And here we are, in 2025, with one of our most revered acting dames taking on the role of the UK’s first female prime minister during her most beleaguered hour. If Walter had reservations about the role, the pedigree of the project proved too tempting. She remembers, “I was drawn by the people involved: Steve Coogan, James Graham, director Stephen Frears. I thought, ‘I just wish it was about somebody else.’”

Surely if she perceives Thatcher as such a villain, that’s up every actor’s alley? “I thought she was blinkered. I realised she was necessarily one-track in her determination and ideology, she couldn’t afford to look left or right, and I thought that would be a boring journey. But the way James has written it, there are lots of chinks in the armour that make it more interesting. So, I decided to swallow hard and go for it.”

Jumping on board, she immersed herself in Thatcher’s clothes, mannerisms and voice, but Walter demurs from saying she landed the perfect impersonation. “Your voice is a very intractable thing, it’s so characteristic of you. What you do is an impressionist painter’s version of a character and hope it’s reminiscent enough that people will go with the story.”

Walter’s acuity is most palpable in the interview scenes she shares with Steve Coogan as Brian Walden, Thatcher’s friend turned ruthless interlocutor. With the two-hour drama filmed in three weeks, the actress reveals there was no time for nerves. “Both Steve and I were equally preoccupied. Getting all your ducks lined up – the voice, the hair, the intention – that’s a lot for an actor to get under their belt. We had to be ready, sharp and prepared.”

I wonder if, despite herself, Walter found herself warming to Thatcher. “I didn’t ‘warm’ to her,” she says immediately. “She remains unchallenged as a role model for female politicians in this country and that’s regrettable, because I don’t think it’s a very nice role model. I don’t think you have to out-boy the boys to get anywhere. I like to think there’s an alternative.

“But I began to understand where she was coming from. I sympathised with her unprecedented situation – being the only woman in a very male establishment. I found that explained so much of her behaviour and attitude, feeling that if she bent an inch, she’d be considered weak. Plus, I understood why she should resent the silver spoons in the mouths of the public school brigade, who inherited their positions effortlessly with a leg up that her kind wouldn’t have had, if she hadn’t had that grit that people either loved or loathed.”

Something Walter, aged 74, undoubtedly shares with Thatcher is a work ethic. Fifty years into a career encompassing the Royal Shakespeare Company, Broadway, films and TV, she has found a whole new generation of fans with scene-stealing roles in Ted Lasso and Succession. Of the latter, she says: “We love wicked characters who do things we wouldn’t dare. I think I enjoyed it as much as people enjoyed watching it. Particularly delivering nasty lines with a big smile, I love that.

“If I have a mission, it’s to broaden and multiply the images of older women, to give more complexity to them. We might look older and a lot of people just write us off, but inside we still fall in love and are interested in other people.”

When she’s at home in London with her husband, American actor Guy Paul, between playing the piano and long walks, she likes to catch up with friends, “on the whole creative people or those involved in activism”. She describes a recent trip to the House of Lords where she joined a group lobbying for emotional learning in schools, “getting children in their early life and undoing prejudices that we inherit”. Quickly she says, “But I’m not actually a political person. I don’t have a political mind.”

Maybe not, but had Harriet Walter ever sat down with Margaret Thatcher, it’s clear they would have had plenty to talk about, without resorting to fashion.

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Brian and Maggie premieres on Wednesday 29th January at 9pm on Channel 4.

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