Passion Projects
With
Gillian Anderson
With star turns in Sex Education, The Crown, The Fall, and Netflix’s hotly anticipated new drama, Scoop, GILLIAN ANDERSON is at the top of her game – and setting her sights on a multi-hyphenate empire. Here, she talks to KATIE BERRINGTON about prioritizing pleasure, letting go of guilt, and building ‘Brand Gillian’
The pursuit of pleasure is a mission that Gillian Anderson is relishing right now, personally and professionally. “It’s a good moment for an old biddy like me,” Anderson smiles, ensconced in a corner table of a Soho restaurant, having battled a last-minute diary mix-up, traffic jams and a location mishap. “First martini on me,” she texts with profuse apology minutes before she arrives, full of warmth and a luminosity that defies the torrential September afternoon, and a vigor to discuss her intriguing new ventures. Suffice to say, no dictionary would accept Anderson’s definition of ‘old biddy’.
“It feels exciting,” she says over tea, rather than a martini. “It feels exciting in a different way than I’ve been excited before.”
Acting has been her long-time love and livelihood. The top line of Anderson’s résumé spans an FBI agent (The X-Files), a detective superintendent (The Fall), Margaret Thatcher (The Crown), a sex therapist (Sex Education) and, soon, broadcaster Emily Maitlis in Scoop, a behind-the-scenes drama that delves into that Prince Andrew Newsnight interview. While she has no intention of stepping away from the camera, the past few years have seen her move “more into the driving seat” of her career. “[I’m starting to] have conversations about what I like,” she says. “What would I like to see out there? What would I like to be involved in that maybe I haven’t had a chance to yet, or that I feel hasn’t had a voice that needs a voice?” The outcome is that she’s started a production company, is in the process of editing a book about female desire, and has launched the “antithesis” of a wellness brand.
“[PLEASURE] is a right. It’s not trivial. It’s not frivolous. We’re trying to ENCOURAGE women to let go of the shame, the GUILT, the negative messaging around it”
The brand – G Spot – is the most different to anything she’s done before. Anderson “doesn’t think of it as a wellness brand… because a lot of that is problematic [and] anxiety-inducing, and that’s precisely not what it’s about”. In its current iteration, despite the innuendo of the name, it’s a range of natural soft drinks – the wellness association being that they are enhanced with adaptogens and nootropics, which are said to boost performance and cognitive function. Anderson’s interest in the drinks realm came from realizing a chain reaction between the restricted diets she spent her twenties and thirties swapping between and, “in my forties, feeling like, ‘Don’t tell me what I should and shouldn’t be consuming; I can do whatever I want’… and getting a proper, proper addiction to caffeinated drinks”. Now in her fifties, Anderson wants more of a balance of what she feels is actually beneficial to her.
Helming the business from its start-up stage has been a challenge, and she credits the team with honing her as a leader. “I’m used to being such a lone wolf in a sense, as an actor. You really turn up [on set] with it done,” she says. “So, to have a team who is doing it with me, I’m learning how to stay sane, how to stay calm and how to give praise as often as possible – because, ultimately, everybody is doing it to grow this thing that is mine.”
She hadn’t necessarily planned on being so “front and center” of the company, but, particularly in recent months as the acting world halted amid the SAG-AFTRA strike, she’s had more time to prioritize it. “And that’s led to bigger conversations. Bigger conversations about how G Spot fits into other aspects of…” Anderson pauses, eyebrows raised knowingly.
“I’m going to say this, and you will print it in exactly the way I’m asking you to say it,” she dares, eyes twinkling. “Because I’m going to say… Brand Gillian.” She draws out the syllables with a shudder. “It makes me literally want to crawl up in a corner of the room and puke. BUT, I said it.” I tell her that ‘Brand Gillian’ is written in my questions and she laughs.
“Sometimes I feel completely OVERWHELMED. You know, some days feel like they’re CATASTROPHIC and some days go OKAY”
“Well, [there is] the book and a couple of other things that I’m not talking about yet, but they’re the same messaging in terms of pleasure and empowerment, and being honest with oneself about what one wants and what feels good.” She didn’t set out to create this multi-pronged enterprise centered on pleasure, but her mantra on it is absolute: “It is a right,” she says. “It’s not trivial. It’s not frivolous. We’re trying to encourage women to let go of the shame, the guilt, the negative messaging around it.”
This is best encapsulated by her book, which will be published by Bloomsbury in 2024. Anderson called on women to write to her with their unshared sexual fantasies, beginning ‘Dear Gillian’. It was inspired by Nancy Friday’s 1973 bestseller, My Secret Garden – a revolutionary project for the era that gave women an anonymous platform to reveal their innermost desires.
“I got famous at a time when SOCIAL MEDIA didn’t exist. I don’t know how the [younger generations] manage to make good CHOICES for themselves, let alone their careers, when there is so much PRESSURE on them”
It might fall under Brand Gillian, but the main draw for Anderson was actually “because it is very little to do with me,” she says. “This is about women, and specifically the women who have written in… It was important for me that we have as many voices as possible.”
She’d imagined carrying handwritten letters around with her, ready to pour over in a spare moment, but in the digital age the process required an iron-clad online portal, locking the letters away from any data collected about their authors. “The only way to make this work was to find a way to guarantee that they couldn't be linked back to the writer,” she says. As editor, Anderson now has her work cut out; they received enough submissions to fill “ubers” of volumes.
She’s thriving on the creative ride of branching beyond acting, but the differing timelines – from shoot schedules and literary deadlines to team meetings and mixologist sessions – is full on. “Sometimes I feel completely overwhelmed. You know, some days feel like they’re catastrophic and some days go okay.” And there’s also home life to factor in. Anderson has a grown-up daughter, who is in her late twenties, from her first marriage, and two teenage sons from her second.
“When they’re in school, I do my darndest to do as much of my work during those hours so I’m available afterwards. I have a very good relationship with my boys’ father, and we split our parenting,” she says. “And when I do film, I’m pretty strict about my schedules to make sure there are chunky gaps for me to be present for my kids and to have a life.”
Walking her dog – “which my children refer to as my favorite child” – does wonders for the daily balance, too. “It is a battle to not look at my phone while I’m walking, [but] when I’m in those weeks where it feels like hell – of my making,” she’s quick to add, “I do let myself off the hook. It’s about embracing a certain fearlessness in order to let go of the self-judgement.”
Still, switching off doesn’t come naturally. “My partner [Peter Morgan, screenwriter and creator of The Crown] laughs at me referring to any time as being ‘not working’. You know you hear yourself say that sometimes and he’s like, ‘You are the least not-working person I’ve ever met in my life!’”
The boundaries she finds most difficult to set are the ones that relate to her children, but it’s getting easier as they get older. “I pretty much say yes to everything,” she admits. “But I think my kids, at the ages they are, have seen how much their dad and I give to them and so, on the rare occasion that we do say, ‘Tonight, this is what I need’ or ‘I’m afraid where you want me to take you is too far because I’ve got something on’, they don’t go, ‘Ohh, Mum’. They get it. I could almost weep [because] they get it.”
For Anderson, the biggest surprise in building Brand Gillian has been the degree to which she has accepted the role of social media. “You know, I could choose for it not to be [important to my career]. There are plenty of actors out there [who do],” she says. “I would never in a million years have dreamt that I would have a TikTok account, but one of the things I have been encouraged by my team to embrace is finding a way to step into that world from time to time for the benefit of the brand – because of the audience that it connects to. Why ignore them by not speaking through the medium that they will most likely hear?”
This has meant making a concerted effort to swap from her cynical “rolling-your-eyes stance” to sharing candid behind-the-scenes videos, albeit via a member of her team. “I’m embracing it in a way that I wouldn’t have dreamed of even five years ago. Completely selfishly for Brand Gillian!” she admonishes with a grin.
Having been in the public eye for three decades, Anderson is certain her experience of getting into the industry now would be worlds away from what it was. She recalls how it was possible to be part of high-profile projects without the persistent pressure to be “on” under the glare of social media and camera phones. “If you’re that famous at any given time, you are aware every minute you’re out in public that you are a subject slash target for your day-to-day life to be public fodder,” she considers. “I feel like I have a relatively good head on my shoulders today because I got famous at a time when social media didn’t exist. I don’t know how the [younger generations] manage to make good choices for themselves, let alone their careers, when there is so much pressure on them to be and do, and to say and not say.”
“I have started asking the question: what do I really WANT? What feels GOOD? What actually brings me PLEASURE?”
How does she make decisions for Brand Anderson? “I have started asking the question: what do I really want? What feels good? What actually brings me pleasure?” A good slogan, I suggest, and it seems to be working. “I mean, we do seem to be building an empire,” she laughs.
For more information, visit G Spot’s website thisisgspot.com
SHOP THE SHOOT
23 items
RELATED READING
The unmissable new TV shows to add to your watch list now