If there is one thing The Crown excels at, it’s depicting the insular nature of the royal family. This is a family who rarely encounters the public, who lives a very different life to their subjects, and exists in a class of society all their own. As such, the royal family sticks close to one another, becoming one group of people who stay close if only because they’re the only ones who can relate to each other’s circumstances.

This situation is even more clear in Season 4, as the outside world comes barging into the royal family in the form of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson), whose background, disdain for the royal family’s manner of living, and hardened exterior fuel her ongoing clash with Queen Elizabeth II (Olivia Colman) and the rest of the royals. We first see this clash in Episode 2, “The Balmoral Test,” which follows, in part, Thatcher’s visit to the royal family’s Scottish homestead. The visit exposes the royal family’s cliquey side, with this group of privileged folks slyly working to subvert Thatcher’s efforts to get on with them.

The topic of the royal family’s cliquey side came up during a press junket Collider attended for The Crown Season 4, which featured Colman, Tobias Menzies, and Helena Bonham Carter as panelists. The cast was asked about “The Balmoral Test” and the royal family’s behavior as exhibited in the episode and whether they believed that was an accurate representation.

Menzies took the first swing, remarking, “This is what we’re imagining and obviously Peter [Morgan, creator of The Crown] kind of constructs this episode. It’s called ‘The Balmoral Test’ where we have these two very different women being tested through this prism of the kind of strange etiquette and rules that are slightly unreadable of this family — as close as that family gets to ever sort of letting its hair down and being a family. But it’s still pretty esoteric. The rules, the different sorts of pageantry, what you can and can’t do.”

Menzies continued, drilling down with specific examples from the episode:

“What’s shown by the episode is Diana gets it [snaps] and therefore passes with flying colors and that is a big part of why that relationship is kind of championed by the family and goes forward whereas Thatcher is out of her depth and doesn’t understand the hidden, unspoken rules and really actually sets up the rest of the series about her animosity to the privilege of this class. As you say, I think there is something less than kind about how they let her fail. It’s a very ingrained English thing, that we use class to put people in their places without having to say stuff. You go, ‘You don’t belong here,’ and Peter doesn’t really blink at that. It’s the royal family at their least beguiling.”

It was at this point Bonham Carter chimed in, offering that the episode’s highlighting of how Thatcher and the royal family differed in their approach to life — with the Prime Minister putting work first always and the royals knowing when it was time to take a break — as a subtle flashpoint for discord. The actor offered, “There’s a point where Margaret says [of Thatcher], ‘If only she knew how to live,’ and recommended her to maybe be able to… She didn’t trust anyone who did know how to enjoy herself. I think Thatcher was a workaholic. She tried and she worked from the moment she was born, and she was extraordinary in that way.”

Menzies arguing that the clash of mindset between the two opposing parties that begins in “The Balmoral Test” isn’t necessarily an indictment of either side, but rather fuel for a very interesting fire:

“I think you see, in that moment, a little bit of Britain changing. In a way, [Thatcher] swept a lot of that out. [...] But what I like about the argument is that part of me is drawn to both because part of what [Princess Margaret] says is, ‘It can’t all be just work. You have to be able to take your leisure,’ which is maybe an older idea. But also I love the modernity of what Thatcher is saying, which is that someone like her hasn’t had the luxury of leisure. She’s had to fight her way up and that’s all so real and really interesting.”

So, is The Crown really intent on exposing the royal family as some kind of untouchable, unknowable clique? Maybe. But what the Season 4 cast leads have also made clear — and perhaps this is what makes this Netflix show so interesting — is that the show is also interested in drilling down on how those kinds of ingrained behaviors color interactions with everyone in the family’s orbit, for better or worse.

The Crown Season 4 is now available to stream on Netflix. For more, see what The Crown star Olivia Colman had to say about acting opposite Gillian Anderson as Margaret Thatcher and read our review of Season 4.