‘I get into trouble’: Gillian Anderson on being brave, her resting face and much anticipated book of sexual fantasies

Her uncanny portrayals of famous women have brought her legions of fans. Now, as she prepares to play Emily Maitlis in the pivotal Prince Andrew interview, the actor talks to Eva Wiseman about acting, soft drinks and ‘side hustles’

“I have a tendency to be cast as those types of women who have unbelievable brains,” says Gillian Anderson, running her hands through her glamour of blonde hair, “because my resting face is intellectual, as if I’m thinking about Proust or the world order. When in fact it’s usually, actually, dinner.” The next unbelievably brained woman Anderson will play is British journalist Emily Maitlis, in Scoop, a film about the process of securing her 2019 Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew. This was the interview in which he discussed his friendship with sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, his inability to sweat, and the Woking branch of Pizza Express, and, in 50 fast minutes, managed to do more damage to the royal family than five seasons of The Crown.

This will not be the first time Anderson has played a “real person” on screen. After growing up in London and moving to Michigan at 11, she found community in the punk scene as a teenager, before lurching into wild fame in her 20s as Agent Scully in The X-Files, later being cast as Wallis Simpson, Eleanor Roosevelt and, memorably, Margaret Thatcher. Now 55, with three children, she is both curious about and resigned to her status as “world’s sexiest woman”. When Emily Maitlis heard Anderson was to play her, she told GQ: “I have teenage sons, so that was hormonally complicated.”