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Co-founders of Great Meadow Productions and Executive Producers of Margaret, Robert Cooper and Kate Triggs, have spent five years bringing the film to fruition. Here they discuss the ambition behind the project and why Margaret Thatcher is such a fascinating subject.

Robert: "Five years ago Kate and I were having a conversation about which person – during our lifetime – had most changed the way we live in Britain. Was it, for instance, whoever invented the mobile phone, the internet or credit cards? Or was it someone who had, for better or worse, changed the way we think about work, government, wealth, the law, welfare, capitalism, the unions and all the values of what we call 'society'?

"If so, there was only one contender: Margaret Thatcher. Love her or loathe her, we all live in her legacy. Her face, her voice, her turns of phrase, her clothes, her hair – all are indelibly printed on our collective, national psyche. That it was a woman who rose to the top of the British Tory Party – that most male of all establishments – and became a world icon of capitalism, made the challenge of making a major TV drama about her even more irresistible.

"That and the fact that despite the strength of the Saatchi brand-image, we never really saw Margaret Thatcher the person until that glimpse of the tearful woman in the back of the car as it drew away from Downing Street after 11 years of power."

Kate adds: "Beyond the long list of battles she waged to re-shape the social, cultural and political life of this country and its position in the world, there always remains the myth of the woman herself.

"During her long premiership and beyond, she stirred such strong emotions in the people of Britain (and the world) and yet what we saw and heard on our televisions, in newspapers and on the radio was a presentation, a creation and not a human being."

Great Meadow's two-hour film for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Two predominantly focuses on the final days of Margaret Thatcher's reign as Prime Minister and reveals her turmoil as the realisation dawns that her cabinet has abandoned her.

The film also delves deeper than the political storm of November 1990, revealing the private Margaret, hidden behind the public persona.

It's a story with a classic form, says Robert: "Aeschylus and Shakespeare knew that the lives of the mighty could tell us more about the human condition simply because they are tested more than ordinary mortals."

The film was written by acclaimed script writer Richard Cottan, whose recent screen successes include Wallander for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, starring Kenneth Branagh.

Richard spent months researching Margaret Thatcher, her political colleagues and her time in power before writing the final version of his script.

"Ultimately, of course, it was Richard who took on the greatest challenge of using the extensive research and giving it a dramatic form," credits Kate.

"In the act of doing that, he gave it authorship and the film is, as it should be, the writer’s view," Robert adds.

"The original notion was to tell this classic story in two parts – literally her rise and her fall – to allow the audience to compare the younger Margaret Thatcher who was hungry for the power to change all the things she considered wrong with the country, with the 65-year-old Margaret, hungry to hang onto power no matter what.

"A couple of months into development our writer Rick Cottan called us and said he wanted to tell the whole story in one big complex film, moving backwards and forwards in time so that the changes her 11 years in power had on her would be that much clearer and more powerful. His first draft was brilliant – and around four hours long!

"The development process that followed Rick's delivery of that first draft was certainly the most intensive and challenging of my career.

"And had it not been for Rick's exceptional powers of endurance, fortitude and creative brilliance, the project would probably have foundered. To reduce the TV equivalent of King Lear to half its length and yet retain all its power and subtlety was one of the most painful creative processes I have ever had to engage in – but not half as hard as it must have been for Rick!"

Great Meadow chose James Kent to direct the film and Lindsay Duncan to play the iconic role of Margaret Thatcher.

"When it comes to picking a director, you really have two choices," says Robert.

"You can go with experience and select someone who has successfully made similar pieces before, or you can follow your instinct about someone who has done a very different kind of work, but work which in some way chimes with the thing you are trying to achieve.

"It was James's low-budget film about the life of the cookery writer Elizabeth David that first interested us in him. He imbued it – and his subject – with intelligence, wit and an emotional quality that was genuine, detailed and rare. A series of meetings confirmed our belief that he was the right director for Margaret.

"As it turned out, he was one of the most open, thoughtful and responsive directors we have ever worked with. James commanded the respect of every member of cast and crew simply because the film-making process was entirely about 'The Work' – concentrated, exciting and rewarding. Personal ego and temperament seemed to have no place on his set.

"We are greatly indebted to Lindsay for taking on the huge responsibility of portraying a living, national icon – particularly for not portraying her as an icon. Other film portrayals by other excellent actresses have tended towards the ice-maiden; deep-thoughtful-voice, totally controlled, political Margarets.

"We wanted the Margaret we had glimpsed in the memoirs of her ex-colleagues, friends and enemies – the explosive, instinctive, ruthless Margaret of the political jungle.

"Two days into rehearsals Lindsay very bravely took the decision to drop the Saatchi-manufactured voice she had so brilliantly mastered. She did so because it might do what it had done for the real Margaret Thatcher – distance us from the real person behind it.

"Ultimately Lindsay's performance does justice to her subject by engaging us in Margaret Thatcher's sense of betrayal, pain and disbelief."

Great Meadow is no stranger to making controversial and "talked about" drama with recent credits including the award-winning Bradford Riots for Channel 4, and the hugely popular series of Messiah, starring Marc Warren, for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ One.

As the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's one-time Head of Drama in Northern Ireland, Robert was also responsible for many award-winning radio and TV dramas with political themes, as well as Anthony Minghella's first feature film, Truly Madly Deeply.

Margaret is the production company's second film about Margaret Thatcher, with the first, Margaret Thatcher – The Long Walk To Finchley (starring Andrea Riseborough), garnering much critical acclaim when it transmitted on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Four earlier this year.

"The films were conceived entirely independently of each other," points out Kate, "and are unique pieces in that sense. But what each of them seeks to do is to understand the woman in the hope that by doing so we may understand more about ourselves.

"Whilst Tony Saint was drawn towards the intelligent humour of the Ealing comedies for his inspiration in writing The Long Walk to Finchley, Richard Cottan's Margaret is an altogether darker tale full of treachery and betrayal, with overtones of a political thriller."

The two-hour film was shot in just 26 days in a variety of locations across London and the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Counties which doubled up for the many iconic places featured in the drama.

Kate explains: "What was important to us in locations was a sense of epic scale rather than places that had the exact dimensions and layout of Downing Street, for example.

"Scale is important in this film because it has a psychological effect; it comments on Margaret’s emotional state. It helps us to understand the nature of power and being human amidst the enormous scope and importance of her job."

"I have never been so nervous going into a film as this one," says Robert.

"It is two hours long, takes place in three or four historical periods, has a cast of 50 and is set in breathtaking locations from Buckingham Palace to the House of Commons, Downing Street and the Paris Embassy.

"To do all this on a very constrained TV budget was an extraordinary achievement – only possible through the kindness, generosity and skill of all the cast and crew who unstintingly gave their all in the face of a very tight schedule.

"I want to pay particular credit to our exceptional producer, Sanne Wohlenberg, line producer Hilary Benson and casting director Rachel Freck."

Kate adds: "In casting we took a view that the emotional power of this story would be best served by wonderful actors who understood the piece and were in the world of the story.

"We felt strongly that we wouldn't achieve this through impersonation, which is a great skill but has a different and curiously distancing effect on an audience's ability to engage with the story and characters."

So how does Great Meadow think people will feel about Margaret Thatcher after watching the film?

"For me making this film was a way of facing up to my own demons," says Robert.

"I, like many others, had demonised Margaret Thatcher throughout her reign. As time passed I realised this was just a way of letting myself off the hook, of not facing up to the fact that we, as a nation, had voted her in three times and that there must be a collective reason for this – a bit of Margaret Thatcher in all of us, perhaps.

"But not the Margaret Thatcher with the carefully constructed voice patterns and facial expressions which, to me, seemed so transparently insincere.

"The challenge was to make her a real person who we empathised with, even occasionally sympathised with, so that we could at last understand who, and not just what, she was. In other words, to do that thing that only drama can do – to vicariously experience another person's life in the space between curtain up and curtain down.

"Ultimately I want this film to do what TV dramas did when I was a kid – spark a debate about its subject, about whether the film is fair and about who we are.

"TV drama has the potential to be the most questioning, challenging and, most of all, democratic of art forms. I'd like Margaret to encourage broadcasters to commission more of that kind of work."

Kate sums up: "If the film works on all the levels that it should, then I hope it will resonate beyond the singular experience of Margaret Thatcher and set us all to thinking about the nature of power in the past, the present and the future."