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WITH THE MASSIVE cult following that The X Files had back in the day, which has been revived as of late by nostalgic fans and people who are just growing to love Mulder and Scully for the first time, it’s safe to say that people have some very strong feelings about actress Gillian Anderson. 

The internet’s obsession with Gillian Anderson isn’t just due to her role in one of TV’s longest running and most thrilling sci-fi series, but it has also been compounded by some of her more recent roles, namely the new Netflix series Sex Education, in which she plays a talented sex therapist who is completely unable to transfer her communication skills to her role as a mother. 

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If you’ve only just caught up with watching Sex Education, there’s a good chance you’re still on that I-wish-Gillian-Anderson-was-in-every-TV-show-I-watch buzz, as so many people have been professing to be on Twitter for the last week or so. Well, your wish has been granted, and depending on, eh, where you stand on the political spectrum, you’ll either be delighted, or very afraid upon hearing the news that Gillian Anderson’s going to play Margaret Thatcher in The Crown. 

We’re going to go with the latter, which seems more likely, and assume you’re probably worried about how this is going to pan out. Will this affect Gillian’s likability? Will Gillian’s likability get in the way of portraying how oppressive Margaret Thatcher really was? Are we going to have to listen to people talking about how much they fancy Margaret Thatcher now because of this? 

There’s a pretty large cohort of people who will likely be troubled by this news, namely any fans of The Crown who grew up poor and/or in Ireland during the 1980s and 90s. On top of that, Gillian Anderson’s massive LGBTQ following are going to be seriously conflicted about the news.  

It will be more than a year until we see Anderson onscreen in the role of Thatcher in The Crown as the third series of the show is set to air this year. Series three will pick up in 1963 and cover Beatlemania in the UK, England’s World Cup win in 1966 and introduce characters like Camilla Parker Bowles.

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Gillian Anderson won’t appear until the fourth series, which will move to the 1970s and depict Thatcher’s run as Prime Minister, which lasted from 1979 to 1990. So on one hand, we’re guaranteed that there’ll be a lot of Gillian Anderson in The Crown, since her character’s career spanned three decades, but on the other hand… Does Margaret Thatcher even deserve to be played by Gillian Anderson? 

Anderson’s acting range leaves us in no doubt that she’ll do a very good job in the role of Margaret Thatcher, but is now really the best time to cast an almost universally loved icon as a woman who stood over some of the most harmful policies of the 20th century (many of which we are still dealing with the consequences of today)? Forget whether or not Margaret Thatcher deserves to be played by Gillian Anderson. Do people who still support Margaret Thatcher today deserve to see her portrayed by Gillian Anderson? 

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