Thatcher so lacking in empathy she would have been diagnosed with disorder today, says Steve Coogan

Margaret Thatcher was so lacking in empathy that today she would be diagnosed with a disorder, according to Steve Coogan, the star of a new drama about the former prime minister.

Coogan plays Brian Walden in Brian and Maggie, a Channel 4 series which dramatises their famous 1989 television interview.

The actor said he had “huge antipathy” towards Thatcher and vetoed one scene in the drama because it was too kind to her.

Dame Harriet Walter, who stars opposite him as Thatcher, is not a fan either. The ex-Prime Minister was a bad role model for women, said the actress, who described herself as Left-wing.

She and Coogan met while attending Extinction Rebellion events.

Interviewed by Emily Maitlis in this week’s Radio Times, Coogan said: “Of course, I had huge antipathy towards Thatcher. I was very anti-Thatcher. And the one thing I was worried about in this drama was being too compassionate because of her legacy… In fact, in the edit we cut something because I thought it was a bit too kind and we wanted to remind people that there was this damage.

“She had vision and zeal, but she lacked empathy. Now, she’d probably be diagnosed with some sort of disorder.”

Coogan said he was interested in Thatcher’s “outsider” status as a member of the lower middle classes, and also argued that she was “definitely a victim of sexism, whether she knew it or not”.

Dame Harriet said she was drawn to the project because of the team behind it: Coogan, writer James Graham and director Stephen Frears. But she had reservations: “I just wish it was about somebody else.”

However, she thought the quality of Graham’s writing was so good that she decided “to swallow hard and go for it”.

The magazine article described her as “musing gleefully” on how awkward it would have been if the actress and Thatcher had ever met.

“I think she would have detested me. I’m domestically impractical, politically Left-wing and thoroughly unreliable. In my youth, I went on demos and picket lines. Plus, my coming from a fairly privileged background. We would have had zero to talk about. Maybe clothes, I suppose,” Dame Harriet said.

“I didn’t warm to her. She remains unchallenged as a role model for female politicians in this country and that’s regrettable, because I don’t think it’s a very nice role model.”

The two-part drama, which launches on January 29, charts the relationship between Walden and Thatcher over the course of several encounters, culminating in the 1989 interview for LWT.

Thatcher is said to have felt betrayed by Walden, the Labour MP-turned grand inquisitor, whom she considered to be a friend.

The interview took place three days after the resignation of her chancellor, Nigel Lawson, and hastened Thatcher’s political demise. Walden accused her of coming across as “authoritarian, domineering, refusing to listen to anybody else”, to which Thatcher replied: “Brian, if anyone is coming over as domineering in this interview, it is you.”

James Graham, whose television credits include Sherwood and Brexit: The Uncivil War, said Thatcher was an impressive interviewee in comparison to today’s politicians.

“If you ran any of her interviews with Walden alongside anything Liz Truss did on screen, it’s embarrassing,” he said.

The drama is based on a chapter in Why Is This Lying B—d Lying To Me?, a book by Rob Burley, formerly editor of live political programmes at the BBC, and is made by Baby Cow Productions, a production company founded by Coogan and Henry Normal.

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