Brian and Maggie: Steve Coogan and Harriet Walter talk going head-to-head in new Margaret Thatcher drama

“We used to have communities. Now we just have stuff.”

It’s the most memorable, tragic line from Channel 4’s new historical drama, Brian and Maggie, charting the friendship and ultimate breakdown of the relationship between former MP and political interviewer Brian Walden, and the economically combative Margaret Thatcher, the most divisive — and loathed — Prime Minister of modern times.

Starring Steve Coogan (I’m Alan Partridge, The Trip) as the politician-turned-TV personality Walden, and Harriet Walter (Succession, Silo) as the ‘Iron Lady’ Thatcher, the two-part drama spans more than a decade, culminating in the infamous 1989 interview that pitted Walden and Thatcher against each other, in the wake of the resignation of chancellor Nigel Lawson.

Already on shaky political ground amidst the introduction of the Poll Tax and growing economic inequality, Thatcher’s faltering performance in the interview is seen as the beginning of the end of her dominant political career.

“On paper, it looks like the most improbable, unlikely piece of entertainment,” says the show’s writer James Graham.

”It's just lots of nerds trying to work out how to do a successful political interview. You always have to ask, why tell this real life story?

“I share, probably, like a lot of you, an anxiety about conversation, like how we talk to each other, particularly in the political sphere. I was just thinking earlier about the past couple of weeks in America, with the election and Musk and Twitter {now X] and just how conversation in the political space is changing. This felt like an unlikely way into a conversation about that. And ultimately the human stories, a friendship I didn't know anything about, a very complicated friendship across lines that get very confusing.”

Walden and Thatcher shared a relationship unlike any in modern media and politics — one that would be frowned upon, if not be declared outright unethical today.

Once on either side of the political divide, with Walden a Labour MP and Thatcher a Conservative, the pair would eventually build a friendship beyond the halls of parliament. Once Walden made the jump to TV, he found respect (to the chagrin of his left-leaning peers) in the open discourse he could have with Thatcher in front of the camera, and would interview her several times during her time in power.

Thatcher on the other hand felt she could trust Walden to allow her a platform to discuss her somewhat radical economic plans — and even cherry-picked him to help write speeches for her.

Walden’s bruising final interview would eventually carve an unbridgeable chasm between the pair, who would never speak again after its airing. But Coogan believes that, for the majority of their relationship, the balance was ultimately in Thatcher’s favour.

“I think [Thatcher] was more in control of the relationship than [Walden] was,” says Coogan.

“He was more enamoured with her, I think, than she was with him. I think she was certainly curious about him, about his background, and I think there was a genuine connection about the fact that neither of them were, ultimately, a part of the traditional establishment.

“They were the products of the state school system, and I think that they shared that, and felt that that sort of connected them in some way, felt that they had an otherness. That, to me, was the interesting part of the story beyond the politics of it, the idea of them feeling that they were connected as outsiders — that’s always interested me.

“Both were from the lower middle class of this country, which is essentially the backbone of this country, what makes it function, and that they both rose to the top of their professions. That background to me is curious, and what you have to do to get there. Margaret Thatcher broke through the glass ceiling, and did it by adopting some of the more aggressive tropes of men. I find it fascinating, that idea of being the product of some sort of imperfect, meritocratic system.”

Putting the Iron Lady back on screen

Considering her commanding performance as Thatcher will likely become a defining role for Walter, it was, from a political standpoint, an unlikely casting call for the left-leaning star.

“I can only describe how relieved I was when filming wrapped!” laughs Walter.

“I was so unsympathetic that I didn't actually watch her on the telly at the time. I just thought I'd throw things at the telly and break my own TV, you know. So I didn't actually study her then. Once the job came along, that was when I started getting curious about what was behind that mask. I was never interested in what was behind the mask before, or in finding out who the human being of Margaret Thatcher was.”

Walter is the latest in a long line of stars who have played Thatcher, including Gillian Anderson and Meryl Streep — with Streep winning an Oscar for her portrayal of Britain’s first female Prime Minister in 2011’s The Iron Lady.

“I believe that people are totally complex, and that's why I could never be a politician, because I haven't got the single-minded interest to judge something to be right or wrong,” says Walter of taking on the role.

“As an actor, I'm always going to try and find the complexity in a character. And if it's written by wonderful writers like James Graham, I'll go for that, even though that might make me feel slightly more sympathetic occasionally to her, or understand her at least a bit better, from where she's coming from. But it doesn't change my opinions about what she did to the country.”

The series also shines a light on a now near-extinct form of political journalism — the televised long-form interview, which The Walden Interview program on London Weekend Television (LWT) helped to popularise in the 1980s.

“The long-form interview is an endangered species, so is drama based on character and politics… that doesn't have a dead body in it,” says Coogan of what drew him to the production.

“I didn't want it to be some sort of rehabilitation of Margaret Thatcher,” he adds. “I wanted it to be something which was balanced in a way.”

And certainly — having seen both episodes at a premiere screening at London’s BFI Southbank, the show isn’t afraid to cast a sympathetic light on Thatcher, with Walter bringing much warmth to the character, and even reserving some of the biggest laughs for the doomed PM.

But Coogan did not want Brian and Maggie to lend Thatcher too genial a framing, insisting one closing scene following the infamous interview be edited so as not to shower her in gratuitous praise.

“The line where Walden said, ‘she's worth 100 of them’ was cut,” reveals Coogan.

“I thought it was too syrupy for him to say that after having stuck the knife in [by challenging her in the interview]. I thought raising a glass to her, which is what he does, was sufficient without the line. Some might think that was a mistake, ‘Damn that lefty Coogan!’. Say that if you like! But I thought it was more subtle for him to just raise a glass.

“Funnily enough, lots of people — who are probably broadly speaking on the left of the linear political spectrum especially — who made this program were so determined not to turn it into some sort of heavy-handed polemic, that we were possibly in danger of going the other way.”

Straight-talking visionary, or an economic Icarus?

Through the swift production (filming for Brian and Maggie took a mere 16 days) did the openly left-leaning cast and crew come to any new found understanding of a figure they previously deemed monstrous? There’s a sense that, in the rear-view mirror to today’s hyper-controlled, pre-briefed and anodyne public political discourse, Thatcher might look (whisper it) refreshing? — straight-speaking, but with clear policies to argue.

“If we don't allow our politicians to converse in a way that isn't reduced to these simplicities, then that leaves a vacuum of complexity, which is often then filled by the Populists who sound like they're talking with substance,” argues Graham.

“Without betraying my politics, if someone like Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage come along into that vacuum of managed moderate politicians, they sound like what they're saying is the truth, because it sounds so to-the-point and direct, but I don't think it's any more or less the truth than what is being said elsewhere.

Donald Trump being the perfect example of that — this vacuum needs to be filled with complexities, or it’ll otherwise be filled with populism. And that's just another form of lying, but with more damage.”

While the personal life of Thatcher ultimately remained a mystery to Walter — ”I didn't find out anything more about what she felt, for instance, about other women.” — Walter now sees a politician whose moral character would stand up better against scrutiny today, at least in comparison to those who would be her peers on the modern global stage.

“I think it's so degraded now, I mean, with the man we're not going to mention across the pond,” sighs Walter.

“We've lost any expectation of… I don't suppose it was an individual decency of hers that was exceptional, I think it was more in the atmosphere of how you conducted yourself at the time.

She also went into these interviews sort of expecting to be able to have some oxygen to put her point of view across, and particularly in the case of Brian, that she felt she could trust him to be sort of… not towing her line, but on her side, in a way that would sort of free her up to be honest with him. Now people are very on the defensive, instantly on the defensive, because they know that their words are going to be chopped up.”

But the failings of Thatcherism extend to the present day, and Coogan is keen to stress that even a revisionist view of her downfall could not avoid exposing the failings of her government, and the damage that it did, and still does, to working class people in the United Kingdom.

“Despite the fact that free market economics and the ‘Thatcher Experiment’ benefited a few people very well, it failed lots of people. We didn't become a share-earning democracy, and trickle-down economics trickled down so far and then just stopped,” reminds Coogan.

“The competition of our national utilities doesn't exist. There are monopolies that line the pockets of a lot of very rich people, at the expense of our public services.

“Having said that, I think Thatcher wasn't duplicitous. She wasn't worried about being unpopular. What I now respect about, her having made Brian and Maggie, is that she was clear, had a clear point of view — and that’s in stark contrast to a lot of politicians these days who just say whatever it is they think will get them to the next day, and are so risk-averse about saying anything.”

Brian and Maggie is coming to Channel 4 on Wednesday 29th January, and streams on the Channel 4 on demand.