Gillian Anderson discusses working with her partner Peter Morgan on “The Crown”, turning down a sex-toy line, and more in a new interview with PORTER.
Anderson, who takes on the role of the U.K.’s first female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, in “The Crown” season 4, says of working with her other half, series creator Morgan: “We would create boundaries around it. Somehow, we managed to get through it OK, and it was fun and actually really lovely to do something together.”
The pair, who have been dating for four and a half years, made a rule not to discuss Anderson’s performance directly – if she had a question, she would speak to the script or research teams, and if he had a note on her acting, he would talk to the director.
Anderson also reveals an offer to launch her own “Sex Education”-inspired sex toy line: “I can’t remember why I said no.”
She says of 2020 and the current political climate: “I worry about the state of the world. It’s so terrifying, and it just keeps getting worse.”
She realizes how much more there is to be done in terms of racial inequality: “No matter how much work I do for charities, I don’t think I’d really ever studied or taken full account of the myriad ways that society works against people of colour and minorities, how endemic it is and how structurally impossible it is for so many to get beyond a certain place.”
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Anderson points to the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement for encouraging her to unlearn false truths about society, telling PORTER: “That was the beginning of an education I didn’t even know I needed. I’m learning how brainwashed I feel I [have been] and we are as a society, and how much there is to learn about what needs to systematically change.
“I have a tendency to try to close my mind against certain things. [But] it is a time to listen.”
