'The letters are extraordinary’ enthuses Gillian Anderson over Zoom from Marrakech, where she is enjoying a few days’ downtime after the BAFTAs. We’re talking about her new book, Want, a ‘contemporary version’ of Nancy Friday’s genre-defining 1973 book about female desire, My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies. Featuring 174 anonymous letters addressed to Anderson, Want will be published later this year. (She’s previously co-authored a science fiction trilogy and a non-fiction manifesto for young women.) ‘They are just a tiny cross-section [of the thousands of letters] we received from all over the world.’ It’s painful culling so many heartfelt missives, she admits, but, ‘I want women to be able to carry it around in their handbag and get it out on the train.’
Want isn’t Anderson’s only endeavour of late: last year, she co-launched G Spot, a sparkling low-sugar soft drink that comes in four flavours, or rather themes – Soothe, Lift, Protect and Arouse – containing adaptogens (which reduce stress) and nootropics (which enhance cognitive function). At the time, Anderson, teetotal for the last two decades, was trying to wean herself off Coca Cola and finding ‘everything I tried was not doing the trick’. She’s thrilled with the result, which is ‘incredibly tasty. And they do what they say on the tin – they give you a really good boost. My team – which is 10 people! A lot of people! Suddenly, out of nowhere’ are producing G Spot ‘in small batches’ and it’s ‘selling out and selling out’, she says, pleased.
Did she plan this kink in her career path or was it organic? ‘It certainly wasn’t a space I’d been dreaming about,’ she laughs. ‘Organic is a good word for it. So much of it stems from Jean Milburn.’ Ahhh, Jean Milburn: Anderson’s stonkingly intelligent, charismatic and self-sufficient sex therapist in cult show Sex Education. There’s something so pleasing about Anderson taking this role – and this kink in her career path – when she was about to turn 50 (she is now 55) at a time when we’ve been led to believe women should be slowing down, not ramping up.
Anderson’s latest project is upcoming movie Scoop, an adaptation of former Newsnight producer Sam McAlister’s memoir, specifically the part where she writes about securing that Prince Andrew interview in 2019. ‘We all know the story,’ says Anderson. But it’s still ‘so propulsive. When the interview suddenly started, I gasped. Which is crazy, because I was there [filming it].’
Anderson is excellent as the wry, watchful Newsnight anchor Emily Maitlis – iconic bob perfectly coiffed, ever-present Biro in one hand – but she was initially unsure about the part. She loved Peter Moffat’s script (‘everything’) and the director Philip Martin (whose credits include The Crown and Birdsong), but ‘there were so many things to get wrong. Emily is so formidable and she’s still alive. When I told them my fears, they said, “That’s exactly why you should do it.”’ Her response was simply, ‘Fuuuuuuck.’ But she was in.
The film leans into the mythology around Maitlis – one of Britain’s most esteemed broadcasters. ‘Nobody has ever seen her eat, she’s superwoman,’ quips one producer in Scoop. ‘She was placed on a pedestal, to a degree,’ agrees Anderson, ‘a pedestal I think she deserved to be placed on – and you get a sense of that from how they talk about her. She’s their secret weapon, right? That interview is bloody serious. Emily is there for one reason and one reason only. She is going to do everything in her power to make sure the hard questions are asked… the questions everybody else has been scared to ask.’
Maitlis declined to meet Anderson because she is working on her own project about the interview, but, to get into the role, Anderson listened to The News Agents podcast, which Maitlis co-presents with Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall, watched hours of Newsnight and pored over Maitlis’s autobiography, Airhead.
Maitlis is the latest in Anderson’s roster of female characters for whom the adage ‘still waters run deep’ was invented, including FBI agent Dana Scully in The X-Files, DSI Stella Gibson in The Fall and Jean Milburn. Each character has its own era, with its own cult fans. (In-between are plenty more epochal women, including Blanche DuBois, Miss Havisham and Margaret Thatcher.)
‘I feel I’ve been incredibly lucky [with these roles]. I could say that I am very specific about choices, but I’ve also done things that haven’t seen the light of day,’ she laughs. ‘I also think, early on in my career, I learned that where I feel like I’m doing important work is when I’m taking risks. There have been so many times when I’ve jumped into something and I’m terrified but I know I’ll be OK because of the last time I jumped into something scary. Whether it’s Blanche, Thatcher or Maitlis. And Scully, which I signed up to when I was 24.’
That was more than three decades ago now, but Scully remains her most famous role. ‘It will never leave me,’ she says, without rancour. ‘There are some die-hard fans who have followed me from X-Files who will watch everything [I do].’ And now it’s reaching an entirely new audience, as part of Gen Z’s throwback TV project, which sees them mainlining ’90s classics. ‘At the BAFTAs I was talking to Samantha Morton’s daughter, who’s in her early twenties, and she just wanted to talk about The X-Files… [The fans span] late teens to octogenarians,’ she marvels.
Like Maitlis, Anderson herself is frequently described as formidable, but she’s warm, relaxed and thoughtful company. At times, I’d go so far to say she twinkles, as much as one can twinkle on Zoom. Her Instagram profile reflects an impish sense of humour, with a bio that reads ‘shag specialist’ and a proclivity for a ‘penis’ or ‘yoni of the day’. (Again, stemming from Jean Milburn.)
But the final season of Sex Education marked something of a gear change for the sensual Jean. Having thought she was perimenopausal in season three, she discovers, at almost 50, that she is, in fact, pregnant. Rather than elegantly breezing through it like she does everything else, Anderson thought it was ‘so important’ to play Jean – with bird’s-nest hair and cabbage leaves in her bra – as a second-time mother struggling with matrescence. This reflects Anderson’s own experience of new motherhood. ‘I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing!’ she cries. ‘You’re upside down and you feel, sometimes, like you’re slightly going mad. And [unlike Jean] I had help.’
After her daughter Piper was born in 1994, Anderson was back on set of the second series of The X-Files almost immediately. ‘Ten days,’ she clarifies. ‘Ten days after a C-section.’ I know it was the ’90s, I say, but bloody hell. How did she feel? ‘I wouldn’t have chosen that, had I had the choice,’ she emphasises, raising her eyebrows. Anderson was 26 and ‘at the time, I was like, “Why is everybody making such a big deal about it?’’ Now, she gets it. ‘I got pregnant in the first series of a show that was becoming a massive hit.’
‘[After] the second one, I didn’t work for over a year. It took over a year before I felt like I was “in” my body.’ Her two sons, who she co-parents with her ex-partner, businessman Mark Griffiths, are 15 and 17. ‘I do every other week – the cooking and the picking up from school and all of that. But when they were younger I. Had. Help,’ she says, emphasising every word like she’s banging a drum. ‘I had help and I still struggled.’ Women who raise children on their own are ‘superwomen’ she says simply. ‘Women. Are. Amazing,’ she concludes. And with eyes twinkling, she logs off.
Stream ‘Scoop’ on Netflix from 5 April
Photographs: Amanda Fordyce
Styling: Martha Ward
Top image: Gillian wears dress, £1,190, Victoria Beckham
Hair: James Rowe at Bryant Artists using Bumble & Bumble. Make-up: Amanda Grossman at The Only Agency using Tata Harper Skincare and Victoria Beckham Beauty. Digital: Matthew Aland. Photographer’s First Assistant: Jimmy Crippen. Second Assistant: Katerina Vahala. Stylist’s Assistants: Gavi Weiss, Joey Yip. Style Intern: Rob Smith.