The 10 Best Answers Gillian Anderson Gave During Her Reddit AMA

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | March 14, 2014 |

1. What music are you listening to lately? (I like this answer because I like picturing Gillian Anderson vigorously dancing to Beyonce.)

All of a sudden I have just in the last couple of weeks, I feel like temporarily my taste has become more mainstream, and so I’ve been listening to a lot of Drunken Love by Beyonce on a loop. And Get Lucky by Daft Punk. And London Grammar. (I like this answer because I like picturing Gillian Anderson vigorously dancing to Beyonce. — DR)

2. What’s your favorite tv show of the moment ?

My teenager forced me to get into Breaking Bad. Which is officially my first real addiction to series television. We got to the end of season 2, before she went off on her gap year, and I’ve painfully been waiting until I see her again to start season 3. (No one should love their children this much. — DR)

3. Hi Gilly!! I was wondering if you have a favorite quote, or maybe a mantra you live by? Thank you!

So I was at a Buddhist retreat before starting all this work, and the facilitator told the story of a three month long silent meditation retreat that he was on. And that in the middle of it, he recalled that the Super Bowl was going to happen. And once that thought got into his mind, he could think of nothing else. Day in, and day out, day in, and day out, he could not think about anything else that the Super Bowl was coming on. To the point where he found somebody in the monastery to drive him to a hotel four hours away so that he could watch the game. He watched the game, and then he sat there, and thought “What the fuck am I doing?”

It started as an idea. It was only an idea. A simple thought. Nothing more than that. And he MADE It be. He made it come true. That’s what we do. We obsess, we get distracted, we make things that are small into HUGE monumental obstacles. That’s the basis of reality television. And it doesn’t have to be that way.

4. What was going through your mind when you were posing with that conger eel?

What was going through my mind was that the diabolical state of our deep oceans is so much bigger than the guts of this fish dripping down my back.

5. My question is assuming your character is made into a gourmet meal by Hannibal what type of food would you want to be made into?

Something so rich that he’d choke on it and die.

6. Now that Piper is older - how does she feel about being so well known to X-Philes because of your pregnancy throughout season 2 and the episode Piper Maru in season 3 being named after her?

So Piper is on a gap year in Southeast Asia. And a couple of weeks ago I get an email from her over breakfast with a picture of Piper Maru tattooed behind a bearded person’s ear. It was a random guy who gets random things tattooed all over his body.

The cool thing is his desire to type her name on his own body was based on his reaction to her as a human being and not because she was my daughter.

7. As I’ve rewatched it, the funnier episodes really grew on me and most of them are my favorites. For being cast in such dark and serious roles, you and David had amazing comedic presence. Were there any scenes you had trouble staying in character because you found it funny while filming? What is your favorite funny scene or episode?

So many scenes were hard to keep a straight face in and not necessarily because they were genuinely funny but because we were in our 16th hour and slaphappy from lack of sleep. And also just the ludicrousness of some of the scenarios we found ourselves in struck us as endlessly humorous. As everybody on the planet seems to know, my favorite episode is Bad Blood. Even just saying the title, Bad Blood, makes me giggle.

8. Basically I am interested to know what drives you to keep “doing.” If that is too big of a question, my back-up question is: What are the next five goals on your to-do list?

First of all, thank you so much for your support, in all aspects of my life. But there’s 2 things that I know. One is that if I don’t get up with the alarm, I’m in trouble. Because my head will start, if I count to ten and I’m still in bed, my mind is in trouble. The second thing I know is not to watch tv (I hate to say that! but it’s so easy to get into a rut of escape in mindless television and/or surfing the internet. And the minute I find myself in either of those two worlds, I’m lost to the rest of my life).
Get out of the house. Find other human beings to communicate with. Read a book. Do yoga. Meditate. Be of service. That is one of the biggest single most things to get one out of oneself, is being of service to people who are less fortunate than ourselves.

9. Why did it take you a whole series to believe Fox Mulder, but only one season to believe Will Graham?!

The irony was not lost on me in that moment. Let’s just say that.

10. Really weird question, but what does Mads aftershave smell like?

He smells like tweed. (That answer is for you, Cindy. — DR)