"I was surprised by the shame of sharing sexual fantasies": Gillian Anderson shares her experience of writing and editing the book Want

Gillian Anderson tells me she feels “very comfortable” talking about sex. It was obvious, even before we met to talk about her new book, Wanta collection of women’s sexual fantasies.

The actress, once named the sexiest woman in the world by FHM magazine, wore a dress covered in vulvas to an awards ceremony and has a soft drink brand called G Spot.

After playing the role of a sex therapist in the hit Netflix series Sex EducationAnderson’s figure was forever associated with frank conversations about intimate activities

However, The actress admits that even she had difficulties expressing her own sexual fantasy into words for the book, as requested by his editors.

“Suddenly, describing the images that have been in my head for a while and the action of doing it, added a level of intimacy that I wouldn’t have expected, and I didn’t expect to be so shy about it.”

Anderson’s fantasy is hidden among 174 which she herself selected, in a book that is not for prudes.

The actress – who rose to fame as Dana Scully on the television show “The X-Files” – and her editors received 1,800 anonymous submissions of women from all over the world.

The letters were selected and divided into 13 chapters with titles including “Being Worshipped,” “Exploration,” “Power and Submission,” and “The Watchers and the Watched.”

The contributions were anonymous, detailing only sexual identity, age, income and marital status.

Susan Young, a clinical psychologist who read the book, tells me that “sexual fantasies are a healthy and normal aspect of sexual expressionas long as they do not cause distress or harm.”

They allow people to explore their minds “in a safe, private and controlled environment.”

Some of the fantasies in Want They are moving: the grieving woman longing for contact and mourning the secondary loss of sexual relations.

“I wish there was more talk about grief, the loss of a spouse, and sexuality,” she writes.

There are other very diverse ones, such as a fantasy about “very exciting, sensual and passionate sex” with Harry Styles.

A co-worker, whose Orthodox religion forbids women from approaching the altar, fantasizes about having intimacy at an altar in an abandoned church.

Anderson describes the stories as “sincere, raw, intimate and beautiful”adding: “We have letters in which they fantasize about having sex with strangers and talk about how the idea of ​​voyeurism turns them on.”

“What interested me most was the joy and enjoyment that women clearly felt in writing, how much it opened them up to a better understanding of themselves, it seemed. Ultimately, this is not my book. It is the book of all the women who have contributed.”

Want is a 21st century version of another collection of female fantasies, My Secret Garden (“My secret garden”), published in 1973.

The journalist’s innovative book Nancy Friday It became a worldwide bestseller. It was the first time that women’s desires were made so public.

Fifty-one years after “My Secret Garden,” Anderson says that She was “surprised” by how much shame still exists around talking about sex and sharing sexual fantasies with friends or partners.

“I thought there would be less shame these days” and it was “a real revelation.”

His book is an attempt to get us all to be more open about our desires.

“Sex and sexual fantasy are still a taboo subject, even though we have programs like Sex Education, Euphoria and ’50 Shades of Grey,'” Anderson says. And then there’s “the multi-billion dollar porn industry,” which she describes as “right under our noses, on our screens, on our phones all the time.”

One of the contributions in Want It begins like this: “I found it very difficult to understand what my own fantasies really are.. So much of what happens in porn is geared towards men, and there are so many expectations placed on us as women, that I find it really hard to decide what really turns me on and how I feel I should act.

Anderson encourages young people to read her book “because there are so many different versions of what sex can be like that go beyond what the porn industry offers them.”

“There’s a lot of tenderness and women who want to be seen as they are and to be cared for, and there’s a lot of romance, too.”

Young highlights a difference between male and female desire. “Women’s fantasies often include a emotional or narrative context which is likely to be different from the more visually and sexually explicit content reported by men.”

Porn is “usually less attractive to women because Pornography is often generated and focused on the desires of men“, he adds.

In 1973, “My Secret Garden” contained explicit chapters about fantasies of non-consensual and illegal sex, including a chapter on rape fantasies.

We live in more sensitive times and in 2024, Anderson wanted to create “a safe space for women to share and read without feeling forced to be afraid or wary of what they would find from one page to the next.”

It was “the right decision” to reject “letters that bordered on illegality, bestiality or incest,” he says.

Despite that choice, one short chapter (“The Captive”) contains material that Anderson says veers into “dangerous themes and we almost felt disingenuous not to include them because they are fantasies that women have.”

Young notes that these types of fantasies “about intense domination, submission, violent and/or even non-consensual acts” They are not intended to be put into practice“.

“They offer a safe place to explore interests and desires that are considered taboo, dangerous or socially unacceptable.”

But above all, for Anderson, in fantasy the woman “is in charge”you can decide with whom, when, where, how much, how often, when to stop, when to continue.”

“So it feels like an empowering admission and revelation rather than something that’s under someone else’s control.”

The 56-year-old star, who is in her prime, recalls that “some” of the characters she has played have taught her about sex and sexuality. For her, it is “vital” to understand the inner life, desires and fantasies of these women, in order to understand “what motivates them.”

We don’t have time to go into what that meant for her preparation for roles like Miss Havisham in Great Expectations (“Great Expectations”) or that of journalist Emily Maitlis in Scoop (“The Big Scoop”), an Emmy nominee, dramatizes the controversial news show interview Newsnight from the BBC with Prince Andrew.

But he tells me firmly that when it came to his role in The Crown“He didn’t think about Margaret Thatcher’s sexual fantasies.”

In person, Anderson is a star in every sense: petite, radiant and soft-skinned. Some of the anonymous women featured in her book struggle with body image issues and feel undesirable.

Even Anderson admits to having “gone through periods where I was really affected by the fact that I was getting older, too.”

“When I’m in front of a camera, there are definitely moments… where I look at the final product and think, ‘Oh my God, is this what I really look like?'” she continues.

Her philosophy is to remember that “this is the youngest I’ll ever look, so I might as well embrace it.”

Some of her colleagues resort to plastic surgery. “I haven’t resorted to that yet,” she says. “But at some point, who knows?”

Anderson recently finished shooting a female-led period western for Netflix called The AbandonsThere she plays one of a pair of “dueling matriarchs” alongside “Game of Thrones”‘s Lena Headey.

“I own the town… This is my town. I say that a lot as I walk through the centre,” she says, smiling.

When we met, Anderson sounded British, but often, in interviews and on her Instagram account, her accent is American.

Anderson was born in the US, but has lived permanently in the UK for decades. “My cells are American, but my soul is British,” he tells me.

His next role is a British TV drama that he is about to start filming in Belfast. His Northern Irish accent is “not bad, actually,” he says.

But before that, there’s a round of book publicity to get through. And the obvious question, which I assume is not just me asking myself: Can you offer any clues as to what your fantasy is?

“No way,” he says with a smile. Like the others, “mine will remain anonymous.”

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