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The Iron Lady

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story : The Iron Lady is a surprising and intimate portrait of Margaret Thatcher (Meryl Streep), the first and only female Prime Minister of The United Kingdom. One of the 20th century’s most famous and influential women, Thatcher came from nowhere to smash through barriers of gender and class to be heard in a male dominated world.

Open Nationwide on Jan 13th

Runtime:1 hr. 45 min.

 

Press Conference on Actress Meryl Streep, Actor Harry Lloyd, Director Phyllida Lloyd, Writer Abi Morgan

 

(Q) : Meryl, I understand you spent like four hours or five hours a day with the makeup for Margaret Thatcher.
 
(Meryl Streep) : No, no, no. We got it down to under two.
 
(Q) : Okay, and I wonder if you ever worried though with a character who is in so much makeup like that if it will obscure your performance, or conversely be the performance.
 
(Meryl Streep) : Interestingly, in the process of developing the older Margaret we ended up taking away, taking away, taking away. There were certain elements that the genius prosthetics designer, Mark Coulier, was able to achieve. He created something that was tissue-thin so that I felt very free and I felt like I was looking at a member of my family, if not me, and so it actually made acting easier.
 
(Q) : This is a question for all of you. How did your background in theater enhance your experience in this particular film?
 
(Phyllida Lloyd) : We thought of the film as something of a “King Lear” for girls; a Shakespearean story, not a political story. And in that sense also we spoke to a number of Margaret Thatcher’s close associates, who described her story in Shakespearean and operatic terms. I’d worked in opera a lot, and to me this did have some of the elements of a tragic opera. So yes, it was rather critical.
 
(Abi Morgan) : I thought the use of Dennis in a way, like the fool in “Lear,” was obviously a theatrical device. I think the great thing about theater, and if you start in theater it does build I confidence in poetic themes and ideas, so I suppose that was a very good starting point for the script for me to think in a very poetic way and allowed that to affect the structure and the tone of the film.
 
(Meryl Streep) : I think for me to imagine myself in different ways comes from my beginnings in the theater. People are more accepting of when you go apparently wildly afield from who you are or where you brought up. Otherwise I would always play people from New Jersey, which limits the career. So yes, I felt like I had freedom to try to step into these very small, tight, big shoes.
 
(Harry Lloyd) : I think it really helped when we were putting it together the way we rehearsed it was very much like a play. We had all the scenes and every scene we went through over at Pinewood, and Phyllida kept it very loose, as you do early on at rehearsals. You don’t try and pin it down knowing you’ve got a long way to go. Often in films you’ve got to rehearse it within five minutes because you’ve got to shoot it, and we gave ourselves the time to play with it and work out the scene. So it was all very collaborative and I think a background in theater helps you work like that.
 
(Q) : This question is for Meryl. Could you tell me how did you relate to Margaret Thatcher as a mother?
 
(Meryl Streep) : Well I got in inkling, I have an inkling of the size of the day that she fulfilled. I looked at her daily calendar and I tried to imagine that. I’m a mother and I work in spurts throughout my career, so I’d work for four or five months and then not, so I was home a lot. And I tried to imagine 11 ½ years of this kind of, you know she was unhappy if there were 10 minutes of free time anywhere in her day that was wasted, wasted time. And so I imagined trying to be in the lives of your children to the degree that I try to be in their lives, and I think it would have been very difficult.
 
(Q) : This is for Meryl. Gay men obviously love strong women like yourself, and Margaret Thatcher was a fierce lady. It’s been said that she would be a gay icon. What do you think? Do you think she has what it takes to be a gay icon?
 
(Meryl Streep) : You know, I don’t know. I just recently found out I’m a gay icon from that show where they do little arias from all my movies. I haven’t gotten up the nerve to go. I don’t know. I think that she stirs very strong feelings, even today, 20 years after leaving power, and she remains divisive. The film will enter a landscape of a world where she continues to cause controversy. I can’t answer the question about whether she’s a gay icon. That’s a difficult one for me.
 
(Q) : Do Phyllida or Abi want to comment on that one?
 
(Abi Morgan) : The hair, I think. The hair and the handbag.
 
(Meryl Streep) : The hats, yeah.
 
(Q) : Meryl, you said you admire the fact that Margaret Thatcher was unafraid to lead and knew how to lead. Yet, that seems to be so hard for more women than men, especially in politics. Can you comment on that?
 
(Meryl Streep) : Well I’m in awe of the sort of all the things that were arrayed against her succeeding to get to the top of her party and then to lead the country, and to be the longest serving prime minister in the 20th century. The array of obstacles that stood before her in England at that time were enormous and I think she did a service for our team by getting there.

Even though you might not agree with the politics, just the fact of her determination, her stamina, her courage to take it on. I think anybody that stands up and is willing to be a leader who is prepared as she was and as smart as she was, it’s admirable on a certain level because you really sacrifice a great deal. All of our public figures do.

(Q) : For Harry and Meryl, obviously you didn’t interact with your older or younger counterparts on screen, but I don’t know if you had interaction behind the scenes in talking about the character and how they evolved. Could you talk a little about that and would you explain how you directed them in relation to their younger or older counterparts?
 
(Harry Lloyd): We had a lovely few days rehearsing, and there was a lovely day which I found really helpful when we had to take lots and lots of photos to dress the house. So we had to pretend to get married and to be on honeymoon, so there was a day where me and Jim and Meryl and Alex were all wearing different costumes, and just for little moments, capture little moments and just having a look at seeing Jim in character for the first time and just recognizing things that I’d seen about Dennis and he’d picked up on that.

And just more than talking to someone about how they’re going to do it, which are always fairly fatuous conversations because actors don’t normally even know what they’re doing, just to be able to observe it and to see some common ground that we had and what was different about it, I think that was the most useful day in terms of me and Jim.
 
(Meryl Streep) : For me just to see Harry and Alex. On that same day you danced through the dining room while Jim and I were dancing, and I was completely overcome, I just broke down because it was like seeing actually your life flash before your eyes. I mean I’d been so immersed in my age and ability and then to see this glorious couple come through and free and that music, and Phyllida played it right through and they did the whole thing. You only see a flash of it in the picture, but it did anchor something emotionally in me that was very important, very important. And then of course when I saw the movie I completely fell in love with Harry Lloyd and could see why she did.
 
(Phyllida Lloyd) : Yes, it was an interesting process choosing someone to play the young Margaret Thatcher. If any of you were there last night and saw Alexandra, who looks nothing like Meryl whatsoever, how we gravitated towards her because she had a very particular spirit, a kind of seriousness of purpose. It was as if she’d somehow, I don’t know, the 21st century had not in any way contaminated her. She was just on another level.

We did a lot of early prosthetic tests to try to build the old lady and to work on the hair and makeup and costume for Margaret the Prime Minister. And we had the two ladies sitting next to each other and it was very uncomplicated. We didn’t do much psychologizing. Alex watched Meryl a lot and it was just sort of about being in the presence of each other, which seemed to communicate.
 
(Q) : I wanted to congratulate you on accomplishing this movie, because it’s an incredible, extraordinary life, a complicated person. My question for Meryl is what do you think was the turning point for Margaret Thatcher in terms of her decision to lead the life of a politician? And what was the turning point for you in your own life when you decided “I want to make a living as an actress”?
 
(Meryl Streep): I’m sure that Margaret Thatcher was forged within her family, in a family of two girls, in a time when sons were favored, and a man that had no sons had no ambition, really, no place to put his ambition. Her father was the mayor of Grantham, very engaged politically, but also he was a lay-Methodist minister, and he preached, and he liked to be up front speaking. And he discovered that of his two daughters he had one that was uncommonly bright and uncommonly curious, and maybe this could be his boy. That’s what I think.

But I could be completely wrong. But I think that in that time it was a disappointment to have a family with two girls, and it remains that in many parts of the world. So we can understand this, it’s not that alien of a landscape, although I can’t imagine it. I think that she fulfilled a promise, and she was uncommonly curious, had a prodigious appetite for learning and for doing things right, and he infused in her the courage to get up and out I suppose.

Not only is she the first female prime minister, but she’s the first chemist to be elected prime minster. She took her degree in Oxford in chemistry, and then took the law boards. Yes, I think she had a lot of promise and she wanted to live up to it. For me I never really decided. I’m still ambivalent. But being an actor lets me be a million different things, so I don’t have to decide.
 
(Q) : This question is for Meryl, Phyllida, and Abi. What kind of research, I mean obviously this performance has much more to do than the outside appearance, but did you get to meet with Margaret? The way that you pitched yourself forward, Meryl, what points of that were the director, in the writing of the script, in just your general observation?
 
(Meryl Streep) : I did observe lots of newsreel footage of her, and the biggest challenge for me was just accomplishing the long lines of thought that she would launch into without taking a breath. Even with all the drama school that I’ve had I had a lot of trouble managing that, matching to it. And that has something to do with who she was as a person, just the galvanizing energy and the drive and the capacity to follow through with a conviction all the way to the end of your breath until you can’t go any further. And not to let anybody interrupt. And by the way, and go on from there. It was masterful the way she could manage these interviews. I’m taking notes on that.
 
(Abi Morgan): When you writing about a political leader like this obviously she was surrounded by great correspondents, journalists, ministers, and so there the reading and watching the broadcasts. And then there was another day when Marilyn and Phyllida came on when they met. But I felt a lot of the time I was sort of digesting material to throw it away, because I wanted to not let it plague me or paralyze me, because I think ultimately it’s a creative process and so you’re trying to almost feel the imprint of a life rather than actually mirror it. So a lot of the time I was reading and reading and then I just put things down and see what settled, see which were the events that I felt resonated and stayed with me and just wait and see what stayed really and kind of floated to the top.
 
(Phyllida Lloyd) : I mean the movie is a combination of very, very heavily politically fact checked by people who were present in some of those scenes that we showed in the political world, and then the work of pure imagination on Abi’s part. So it’s two very distinctive worlds.
 
(Q) : I have a two part question for Miss Streep. First of all, I’m surprised no one’s asked; did you ever get a chance to meet Mrs. Thatcher?
 
(Meryl Streep) : Somebody did ask that.
 
(Q) : Not here though.
 
(Meryl Streep) : Yeah, just before.
 
(Q) : And how do you choose a character like her who’s still alive and might be able to see it, as opposed to Julia Childs, who will never be able to see things? Do you have it in your head that someday she might see it and comment?
 
(Meryl Streep) : Yes. I did not meet her. I did see her once at my daughter’s university, at Northwestern. We went to see her lecture and that made an indelible impression on me, in about 2001, 2002, I can’t remember. But the question as to the special responsibility to playing someone who lives and potentially could see this, we have come under criticism for portraying someone who is frail and in delicate health. Some people have said it’s shameful to portray this part of a life, but the corollary thought to that is if you think that debility, delicacy, dementia is shameful, if you think that the ebbing end of life is something that should be shut away, if you think that people need to be defended from those images, then yes, if you think then it’s a shameful thing.

But I don’t think that. I have had experience with people with dementia, I understand it, and I think it’s natural. We are naturally interested in our leaders and we tell stories about ourselves through the stories of important people. I mean going back to “Lear” and deciding questions of existence through “Hamlet.” We’re not talking about Hamlet’s politics or whether Lear was a good leader; we’re talking about the loss of power, because it’s interesting.
 
(Q) : I was just wondering what it was like working together again after “Mamma Mia!” if you had developed a shorthand.

(Phyllida Lloyd) : I think it’s always easier the second time to work together. In fact, you should start with the second time probably.
 
(Meryl Streep): What do you mean?
 
(Q) : Meryl, do you have anything to add?
 
(Meryl Streep) : Yeah, I loved working with her the first time. But yes, we had a shorthand, and we had to because we had $14 million to shoot a movie that takes place over the course of six decades, right? Something like that. That’s basically no money. That’s less than a tenth of what “Hugo” cost. So 10 movies of the scale of Margaret Thatcher. You can’t spend time missing cues. We did discuss things on the run and all of us understood through a process of a year before we began shooting what we were wanting from this piece.

That it was going to be not a docudrama, not a chronicling of Margaret Thatcher’s political life, that it would be a very particular look back through her own eyes at selected memories. Not in chronological order, in a jumble of memory, we grant glory days that it would all be a part of a reckoning at the end. So we had many discussions before we got onto the game field, and then once we got on we just went.

(Q) : For Harry and Meryl, as actors when you play a character like Margaret Thatcher, like Dennis, obviously people know them, they’re in the public record, they have an impression of them. Do you prefer playing real people or fictional characters where you can have more interpretation of that fictional character?
 
(Harry Lloyd) : It was my first time ever playing on screen someone who existed. Not only exited but existed within living memory of the people who might be watching it. So to begin with that was absolutely terrifying because I thought I’ve got the wrong shaped mouth. That thing he does, I can’t do it, it looks wrong. And I’m trying to work out how Jim is going to do it, so I felt I had lots of hoops to jump through. And as Abi was saying before, you have to take it all and then just wait for the stuff that sticks to stay and throw the rest away.

And what was great about playing him at the age I played I didn’t have to play the Dennis that people knew from the Dear Bill letters and people you’ve seen on ITN News walking on the arm of the prime minister. I saw the Dennis and was interested in the Dennis that people weren’t familiar with and there was no footage of. So I felt I had the best of both worlds; I had a bit more freedom than these guys did.
 
(Meryl Streep) : Well since a good 40% of the film I’m playing a Margaret Thatcher no one has seen or knows and we can’t know, it’s an imagined journey that we were taking. So I felt a lot of freedom, I did. I felt completely free, and that’s a testament to the director and the strength of that vision that we were taking three days in the life of an old lady and using the turbulence of those days, the moving out of her husband’s things, as a trigger to a lot of memories, and disorientation, and a feeling of being thrust back and forth between the past and the present.
 
(Q) : Did you meet her daughter?
 
(Meryl Streep) : No, I haven’t.

End.