Gillian Anderson played a British prime minister on TV, but in real life, she’s just an actress.
The Crown alum, 55 — who portrayed the late PM Margaret Thatcher on the critically-acclaimed Netflix drama — was mistakenly identified as politician Gillian Keegan by ITV journalist Robert Peston on Friday, July 5.
Keegan, 56, served as Secretary of State for Education from 2022 to 2024 as a member of Parliament. She lost her seat in the government after the United Kingdom’s newest prime minister, Keir Starmer, took power yesterday.
A fan posted on X Friday that Peston, 64, “just announced on ITV that even Gillian Anderson has lost her seat. #GeneralElection2024 #GillianKeegan.”
Anderson then jokingly responded back: “Fired?! I quit!”
Other users chuckled at the exchange, with some fans quipping that the X-Files alum would be a great political figure.
“But I’d definitely vote for you if you did stand!” a fan said. “Oh, you’d win the seat. No doubt,” another person wrote. Someone else chimed in: “Well, I voted for you, Gillian.”
Anderson’s turn as Thatcher, who died in 2013, in season four of The Crown garnered her a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in a TV Series, as well as an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2021.
The Crown followed the royal family’s trials and tribulations from the 1950s until the mid-2000s, stopping at King Charles III and Queen Camilla’s 2005 wedding.
Anderson played the “Iron Lady” during her tenure as prime minister from 1979 until 1990 on the show.
The Scoop actress told Entertainment Tonight in March that although The Crown ended its six-season run last year, she’s happy that the series didn’t touch modern times.
“Oh, no. I think it probably ended at the right spot,” Anderson explained. “It was getting too close to present day. It’s much easier when it was further in the past, and I think people didn’t have, necessarily, a direct relationship with the people on the screen.”
She added that the show didn’t need to touch the recent cancer battles of Kate Middleton and Charles, 75.
The Princess of Wales, 42, revealed she had an undisclosed form of cancer in March in a video statement, while the monarch announced his own health struggles following a prostate exam in February.
“It’s a moment where we understand they have asked for a bit of peace and quiet around what they’re experiencing and it feels like that’s the least we can do,” Anderson told ET. “I think in this instance with this latest double-whammy of news the least that people can do is give them a bit of a break and let the headlines settle down for them, to process this as the human beings that they actually are.”
