The Crown season 3 has yet to arrive on Netflix, but we now know one major new cast member who’ll be joining the hit royal drama for its fourth season. Gillian Anderson has signed on to play British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, most famously portrayed by Meryl Streep in 2011’s The Iron Lady, for which she won the Oscar for Best Actress.
As The Crown aims to tell the entire story of Queen Elizabeth II’s time on the throne, season 3 is set to move forward to the monarch’s middle years. As such, Claire Foy has left the series and has been replaced by Olivia Colman in the lead. Matt Smith and Vanessa Kirby are also out, with Tobias Menzies and Helena Bonham Carter taking over as Prince Phillip and Princess Margaret, respectively.
Now that we know that Margaret Thatcher will be part of season 4, we have a clearer picture of which period the third season will cover. Season 2 ended in the mid-1960s and Thatcher came into power in 1978, so it looks like season 3 will stretch across that decade. Following that, season 4 will likely depict much of the 1980s, before Netflix brings us two more runs covering everything up to the present day.
The show has previously dived into the Queen’s relationships with prior Prime Ministers Winston Churchill (John Lithgow) and Harold MacMillan (Anton Lesser), so Anderson should get some strong material to work with. The former X-Files star recently turned up in another hit Netflix show, too – comedy-drama Sex Education, with her performance as sex therapist Dr. Jean Milburn being widely praised. As such, we’re excited to see her getting involved here.
For now, though, we still don’t even know when The Crown will return for season 3. A 2019 premiere is expected, but with Netflix keeping quiet on an exact date, all we can do at this point is speculate. As soon as we hear of something official though, we’ll be sure to let you know.