The Crown is a Netflix drama slowly creeping its way into the present and causing all kinds of controversy across the pond. It comes with the territory when you’re making a show mostly based on the scandals of a royal family that is (mostly) still alive and certainly dealing with the fallout of all the scandals and drama covered in the series.
While the show’s filming was put on pause following the death of Queen Elizabeth, who is very much a main character in the show’s now-five seasons, one actress featured prominently in Season 4 seems preoccupied with a SpongeBob SquarePants meme about her own Crown character.
Gillian Anderson, who has brilliantly played both a sex therapist and Margaret Thatcher for Netflix in recent years, loved that fans are comparing one image of her playing Thatcher to a still from the long-running Nickelodeon cartoon. The image is taken from an episode that aired all the way back in the first season of the cartoon, which started in 1999. In an episode that introduced underwater heroes Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy, SpongeBob dresses up like an old woman and pretends to get robbed by his friend Patrick, hopefully triggering a rescue from the now-elderly heroes.
That outfit, however, looks very similar to something Anderson wore as the Tory lawmaker. And a side-by-side of the two images went viral online on Monday.
uncanny pic.twitter.com/ePctbq49aT
— shiv roy's bob (@stellamilfburn) October 10, 2022
Amazingly, Anderson seems to have seen this just hours after it was posted despite not being tagged in it. And she enthusiastically responded by retweeting it.
LOVE! https://t.co/qedIlnYEXL
— Gillian Anderson (@GillianA) October 10, 2022
She then changed her Twitter profile picture to another image related to the meme, this time a photo of SpongeBob in that outfit with a Thatcher-esque wig on to finish the look. Credit to Anderson, she even gave credit to a Twitter user who made the image, which clearly made their day to say the least.
NOT GILLIAN PUTTING MY EDIT AS HER PFP IM FUCKING CRYITNJDJDKCJSKXJDBS @GillianA HELLO?!???? pic.twitter.com/xHD221vAQx
— alleya 🛸 (@ajofthesaints) October 10, 2022
What we’ve learned here is that Anderson is probably one of the most Online members of The Crown‘s cast. And that she’s perhaps a big fan of SpongeBob. Either way, this is far less dramatic than anything that will occur on Season 5 of The Crown when Netflix lets it see the light of day.