‘I really respect her’: The Crown’s Rebecca Humphries gushes about portraying Carol Thatcher and her ‘complex’ relationship with mother Margaret in Netflix hit
She’s set to portray Carol Thatcher in The Crown’s fourth season.
And Rebecca Humphries gushed about portraying the journalist in the Netflix hit, as she discussed taking on the role with Grazia on Monday.
Revealing she had auditioned three times for the show before landing the role, the actress, 33, said of the part: ‘I really respect her, and the things that she’s been though. And I don’t think I dishonour it.’
‘I really respect her’: The Crown’s Rebecca Humphries gushed about portraying Carol Thatcher and her ‘complex’ relationship with mother Margaret in Netflix hit in an interview on Monday
She said of how much she wanted to examine Carol’s relationship with the Iron Lady, adding: ‘I really fancied playing Carol, especially because the relationship between her and her mother is so complex.’
Rebecca went on to admit it ‘occurred’ to her to contact her real-life counterpart about her portrayal, but said she ultimately decided not to as she wanted to honour the character showrunner Peter Morgan wanted to recreate.
She explains: ‘He is a genius, and because of the way in which he manages to explore these issues, with only the cultural pin in the map of something like “Mark Thatcher goes missing”, I wondered if, actually, speaking with Carol could be confusing?’
Rebecca went on to say it was interesting for the cast to take on their roles this season, as it was the first time a lot of the cast could get in touch with the people they were portraying on screen.
Doing her justice: Of portraying Carol (pictured in 1990), Rebecca said: ‘I really respect her, and the things that she’s been though. And I don’t think I dishonour it’
Despite Rebecca’s positive words, Carol blasted ‘irrelevant and ridiculous’ film and TV portrayals of her family ahead of the new series of The Crown.
The daughter of Britain’s first woman Prime Minister was responding to reports that the popular Netflix show will imply that Thatcher favoured her son.
She told The Telegraph that she never watches anything that portrays the ‘Thatcher Years’ and added: ‘As far as The Crown goes I think that it is irrelevant and ridiculous that I turn up at all!’
Thoughts: Rebecca admitted it ‘occurred’ to her to contact her real-life counterpart about her portrayal, but said she ultimately decided not to as she wanted to honour Peter Morgan’s script
The episode, set in 1982 in the run-up to the Falklands War, is understood to show Thatcher, played by Gilian Anderson, openly saying that Mark is her favourite child.
It reportedly depicts Carol complaining about her life in an echo of the portrayal of their relationship in the 2012 film The Iron Lady, starring Meryl Streep.
In the Netflix episode, Mark goes missing for six days in the Sahara desert on the Paris-Dakar call rally, leaving Thatcher distraught and calling him ‘my favourite’.
Carol is later seen telling Mark that she finds her mother’s favouritism ‘intolerable’, even confronting Thatcher in the No. 10 kitchen.
Criticism: Carol (pictured with mother Margaret in 1979) blasted Netflix’s ‘ridiculous’ portrayal of her family, and said she never watches anything that portrays the ‘Thatcher Years’