Gillian Anderson
Appearances
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
Well, I kind of didn't. I was born there. Six months later, we moved to Puerto Rico because my story goes that my dad wanted to go to film school. And he said to my mom, I want to go to film school. Do you want it to be Los Angeles? Do you want to move to Los Angeles or London? And she said London. And so they didn't have any money to move to London.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
And so we left the apartment, apparently moved to Puerto Rico where my dad's parents were living. And we basically slept on their sofa for a year and a half so my parents could save money and we could move to London. So I only got like six months there.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
I actually ended up back there because when I went to college, I moved to like Wicker Park, Bucktown area before it was Wicker Park, Bucktown. It was still low-income Hispanic families.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
No, no, well, see, he wanted to be a cameraman. He wanted to be a director, a filmmaker. Wow. But then they fell in love with London. We were always going to stay. We eventually, you know, could afford to rent a decent two bedroom apartment. And so we stayed and he got, you know, various jobs working in various places.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
And then he got a call from a film school friend and a fellow American who basically said, I am starting to make industrial films. Come to Grand Rapids, Michigan. and get rich quick. And he said, okay, I'm going to do that. So he went out and we ended up moving to Grand Rapids. We went from London, To Grand Rapids, Michigan.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
Until I went to college, yeah. Which was where? To the Goodman Theater School in Chicago.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
No, I don't think it was. The high school that I went to in Grand Rapids, there was an English teacher. It was an academic high school. I've said this so many times, but the only reason I got in was because I had an accent. Under normal circumstances, I don't think I would have made it into the academic high school. So I got into that, and there was no theater department, no sports or anything.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
But there was an English teacher who... a couple times a year or semesters or whatever, she would direct a play that would be put on in the lunchroom. And at one point, I think we did Our Town. I can't remember who I played, but I think it was for the policeman. In the middle of grilled cheeses and, like, french fries.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
No, but I remember asking for another sandwich so I could take it home later and have it for another meal. I remember I did that when I was in high school. Great callback. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, so I think that was probably what ended up getting me interested. And then I started auditioning for community theater and stuff.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
Well, I think one of the community... shows that I auditioned for and was cast in, you know, it was the first time that I was properly doing something, you know, professional, you know. And there must have been, you know, I think I suddenly felt like, oh, I can actually do this. Like, I can do this. There is something I can do. And it really changed my life around.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
Yeah, it was Antonide and Gelsang. It was a British, I think a World War II play. Yeah. But anyway, you know, the applause or whatever got to me. How old were you? 16, I think.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
That's young to have that kind of... Well, all of a sudden, you know, before that I was sitting on the back steps with the, you know, smoking weed in my lunch breaks and not doing my homework and suddenly...
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
Something in that, in the inspiration and feeling like suddenly I had a purpose, it kind of shifted everything around, and I started doing better in school, and I was voted most improved student.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
Yeah, well, my dad... I mean, I think when I started to audition for theater schools... I mean, I auditioned for one. It didn't occur to me that I wasn't going to get in. Like, I didn't have a plan B. So I auditioned for the Goodman Theater School. Meanwhile, I only take... You know, 20 people every year. I don't know what I would have done if I didn't get in.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
But anyway, my dad sat me down and said, this is an impossible career to get into and you've got to have a backup. And he was trying to convince me to study word processing because he knew that computers were going to be a thing and that I could always get a job on the side when I wasn't acting.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
or able to act or getting hired, that I'd be able to teach people how to do WordPress, you know, to help them on their computers, which is a fantastic piece of advice for somebody else. It just, you know, there was no way in hell that I was going to, never would I, my brain just doesn't work that way. But it's a great piece of advice.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
And the kinds of things that I'm saying to my sons right now, you know what I mean?
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
But doesn't that feel like an idea from the 1980s or something? These days it's different.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
Yeah, no, no, no, it's true. We all go through it as parents. We all experience that with them.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
But that's the thing that I think a lot of teens these days are... The thing of the whole world as an oyster, in a way, obviously, that's a very privileged perspective to have. But I feel like kids these days... that's not necessarily the perspective that they have. It doesn't feel like that is what is on offer anymore.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
There's something, and I don't know what, you know, the degree to which- That it's harder or it's easier? No, harder. So many kids are floundering right now. So many teens are just, or young 20s. You want to know why? It's because of the-
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
So on the one hand, you're seeing the world out there because everybody's posting them and their holidays on yachts and this, that, and the other, but it feels so unreachable and so, you know, it actually has the opposite effect, I think, for a lot of things.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
And while you're looking at it, you're sitting next to your friend not having a conversation while they're looking at somebody's life too. And obviously, as you say, there's tons of books written about it. But it's a really serious problem today. Yeah.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
Well, it was, I mean, the premise is great. So in the show, you're with the serial killer for an equal amount of screen time as you are the superintendent detective who is tracking him, which is me. And I think it was the first time, I don't know what his first time, but it felt quite unique. that felt quite unique at the time.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
So it started where I was brought a script and I'd been in the process of producing something myself that I couldn't get there. I was really, really struggling with the writers and the other producers to get the script to where it needed to be. And then this script landed in my lap and it was like, now that is, that is writing. And it was so spare, you know?
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
It was just, it was like, and I've spoken about this before, it felt like, When I was reading it, my experience of the character, it almost, despite the fact that it was so spare, it felt like my fusion with her was almost alchemic.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
And because there wasn't a lot to go on in a typical American way of reading a script where it's all, you know, all the descriptions are in the directives in between where you get so much information you feel like, you're slightly treated like an idiot, but this was really a beautifully, beautifully spare, and yet you just got who she was, what the world was, who the different voices were in it.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
And it was, so it was really special. And, you know, I met them and, you know, the producers and the director, and it was a fantastic experience. You know, I'd just come off of, I don't know which... version of which Hollywood thing I had just finished doing. But all of a sudden I was in Belfast shooting this little series and it was a real collaboration.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
You know, it was, I went from being on something where I was so detached and so not part of the creative process to all of a sudden being with these guys in Belfast and really immersed and in the conversation and, you know, in the end got to make notes on the edit and all that kind of stuff. So it was the first time that I was being allowed into that part of it.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
And, you know, if I wanted to go back to London, you know, it was a matter of texting the travel coordinator as opposed to sending an email to somebody at Fox and a month later they tell you that, yes, or you... you can and cannot take that flight. So it felt like the whole experience of it was like, this is the real thing, you know?
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
This is what I want to do. And, you know, she was an extraordinary character. I felt from the... Before it aired, when I started to do press, I remember saying to the press who hadn't really seen it yet, you know, they do or they don't watch the screeners that they're sent, and I kept thinking... She's really good for women. Like, she needs to be out there.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
There's something about her, I think, that is going to be incredibly empowering for women. And I don't think we've seen someone like her before on the screens.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
The thing is those kind of things come along and you can't not say yes. I mean, you know what I mean? I think I've always, you have to say yes to those things and then deal with your fear afterwards almost. And, you know, it's the same thing with doing theater is saying yes to things that are terrifying
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
And then at some point when you're halfway through rehearsal, you know, you're feeling like, what the fuck was I thinking? Like, what made me think that I could do this or that I should? And now I'm stuck and I've got to do this in front of a thousand people every single night? Like, what is wrong with me?
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
The next thing that you get to say yes to because, yeah, that's what it's about, right?
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
Like once you've done it, you're kind of... And then it gives you courage enough to say yes to the thing next time that is even a bit scarier.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
I think for Thatcher, it was a bit of that, which is, okay, I'm going to do... I'm going to do everything I can to try and succeed with this. I'm going to start working on it a year in advance. I'm going to study everything, watch everything, read everything. Yeah, you do the work.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
And then you'd show up and you just do your best job and you don't know until afterwards whether people are going to go, oh my God, did you see that piece? It's like, what was she thinking?
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
But the thing is, you see her silhouette. You see, you know, the minute the wig goes on and you get into costume and you see the silhouette alone. I could have talked like Daffy Duck and you would have believed I was Margaret Thatcher because the silhouette was so spectacular.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
Yeah, so we finished X-Files in 2002 and I moved back to the UK. We were always going to move back again when I was a kid and we just never did. And so it was always a dream of mine to at least be, you know, part of my life to be back there. So I went back and I did a play and then. And so I've been living there since 2002. Wow.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
I think so. I think because, you know, most of the theater work that I was offered as a young person was pretty, were British plays. You know, I did The Philanthropist, I did Absent Friends, you know, I did all that. I kept because of my accent, because that was basically my first way of speaking was with a British accent. So that was easy for me.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
And so I was, in living in the UK, they've kind of adopted me from quite, early on of being back there as a professional person post X-Files as being a, you know, they've taken me on as being one of them in a way.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
She is such a divisive character. I mean, people feel really, really strongly about Margaret Thatcher and not all of it is positive. So in playing her period there or from over time, whether we shot it in the States to be aired there, it would be the same reaction. The people that hate her still hate her and the people that love her still love her.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
It's quite a responsibility being the person who asked the secret person on. You got to keep the show going. You got to have some questions.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
Yeah, it came – so in Sex Education I play – it's a Netflix series. We did four seasons. I play a sex therapist. And in the process of – or during the period of time of being on that show, you know – My character's house is filled with sex paraphernalia and pictures of vaginas and penises and all kinds of tantric stuff on the walls. And I kept taking pictures.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
And so I kept wanting to post these pictures. And the girl who does my, because I don't post things myself, does my Instagram. She kept saying, you can't, you can't post it. This is like a peanut. They're not going to let, Instagram is not going to let you post a penis.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
Anyway, I started posting them anyway, and I would do like a yoni of the day or penis of the day, and then people would send me pictures of penises or yonis in nature, like a poodle with a butt. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, it was nice. So I started this kind of thing. Penis in nature. Penises in nature, yeah.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
Anyway, so my professional life started to mix, mingle a little bit with my personal life in that Instagram is an example of anything to do with my personal life. I don't ever post personal things. But so there was a, you know, a cross-pollination that was happening there. And so I... People would talk to me.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
I mean, not in a therapeutic way, but a lot of stuff that came to me since then has been part of that bigger conversation about... sexual well-being and particularly for women. And so in the 70s, Nancy Friday wrote a book called My Secret Garden and she did the introductions to chapters and she invited women to send in letters to her about their sexual fantasies.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
And it was a book that, so anonymous letters from women particularly, mostly in America, writing about their sexual fantasies. And it was like a number one book. All of a sudden, everybody wanted it. Women were carrying it in their purses. But it was a real insight into, you know, what women think about when they think about
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
And we thought we'd discuss doing a modern day version of it to see whether, you know, in the age of, sorry Franny, pornography and, you know, shows like Sex Education or Euphoria or, you know, where everything is out there all the time and you have access to it, to what degree have fantasies, particularly for women... changed over time.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
And so I put a call out about a year and a half ago to women around the world to write to me anonymously. Bloomsbury set up a portal so that they could do it anonymously. And we collected about 1,800 women started writing letters and about 800 of them finished them. And then we've put about 174 of them in the book.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
Well, the most interesting thing to me is the degree to which there are so many rules today about what is appropriate and what is not. Whereas back then... animals show up and... Wow, I think it would be the opposite.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
Yeah, you'd think it would be the opposite. But, you know, we've got the most extraordinary letters from, you know, young teens who have yet to have sex, you know, talking about their fantasies to mothers of many children, single parents, and what it's like trying to do the same old, same old with your partner to...
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
you know, 20-somethings in the dating world and how what exists in their head is different from what they experience out in the real world. You know, it's really interesting. And we've got letters from literally all over the world. So we also ask the women, you know, we also invited the trans community and, you know, genderqueer people and... Yeah, it feels quite egalitarian.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
Yeah, it feels like it's an equal opportunity for anybody to pitch in and to talk about their experience. And it does.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
Yeah, it is a cool thing. It's a really interesting insight. I would have thought that porn would have showed up a lot more in the fantasies. There's a lot of women, no matter how intense the fantasy gets... at the end of the day, just wanting to be seen for who they are, just wanting to be held.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
wanting care, wanting somebody to look in their eyes, or the opposite, women who, by day, are in charge of 500 employees and the CEO of this, that, and the other, and they just want somebody else to be in control. So it's fascinating.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
So I wrote the introductions to each chapter, and I read the introductions, but then there are women, other women, who read the fantasies.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
Thank you. It was so nice to meet you guys. I'm a fan of your show. And yeah, thanks for your time.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
I can feel that. I woke up this morning feeling like I was part of you.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
I remember one time being after one of the awards standing backstage, you know, where they take you backstage and then you've got the tears of press back there from the back row. Somebody said, do you believe in aliens? Which of course, by that point, I'd been asked every second of my life. And I think I might've said, are you fucking kidding me?
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
I think I literally, out of my mouth, I was like, really? That's what you're going to fucking ask me?
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
I think 20 of our episodes, 20 of our 220 episodes were about those hieroglyphics.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
It was, you know what happens when you're on a long journey running show is everything becomes so enmeshed and not incestuous, but you literally feel like you're living and breathing this, you know, the entire crew, the entire experience. And so I think by the time we were done after, you know, we did nine years and I think I was well ready for it to be over. And it took me a while to
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
to properly think of... I think I compartmentalized it. I so wanted to get off it and start doing the things that I thought my career was going to be before I said yes to that job. So I, you know, I imagined I'd be doing Merchant Ivory films and I imagined I'd be doing all this, you know.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
And so I really wanted to, on the one hand, forget that that happened and bounce off it to the stuff that I really wanted to do. But then... You know, it was probably about five years when I suddenly... Because when you're doing something like that, all anybody says is, oh, my God, the show, oh, my God, it's the most amazing. And you don't want to hear that anymore.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
You don't want... You don't... You've heard it so much. And then I suddenly got what they were talking about, like, five years after the show ended. I was kind of like... yeah, that was kind of cool. Like I was on this really cool show.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
But you need time to reckon with it. You need time and space to be able to figure out what it actually means to you because for the last however long you've been hearing what it means to everybody else. Yeah.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
But it takes, you know, it takes a while. It takes focus. It takes, you know, saying no to a lot of stuff, but it also, I remember at the beginning, one of the first things that I, cause after the series ended, I didn't know if I could be on a set again. I didn't know that for myself. It just felt, so I knew that I just needed to get away from Los Angeles and set.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
So I had grown up in London, I moved back to London, and the first thing I did was a play. But the second thing I did, I was offered, was a British BBC short series of Bleak House. And, you know, costume drama. And when they offered it to me, without an audition, I literally, in the meeting with the producers, I said to them, what makes you think I can do this?
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
Because I knew I could do it, but I just spent 10 years doing exactly the opposite of that. And I was so curious. What did you see in me that I didn't? Yeah, that I feel like maybe has been lost or that nobody, yeah, so.
SmartLess
"Gillian Anderson"
We like to watch people fail. I can't remember what they said. I mean, I think that somewhere in the work that I did at X-Files, they gleaned that I could act, as opposed to what I felt like I was doing was not necessary. But of course I was. I mean, they were, you know, we got to, we learned how to be actors during that period of time.