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In Today's Head Exploding News, Gillian Anderson Had to Fight for Equal Pay for The X-Files Revival

By Cindy Davis | Miscellaneous | January 22, 2016 |

By Cindy Davis | Miscellaneous | January 22, 2016 |


This morning I did a quick scan for any X-Files related news, as this Sunday the revival miniseries premieres on Fox. Imagine my surprise — sink into the well of your own disbelief — when the first thing that caught my eye was Gillian Anderson lamenting that nothing has really changed since the 1990s. No, seriously. She’s been working in the business nearly thirty years, won tons of awards, including an Emmy, two SAGs and a Golden Globe (all for her X-Files role), and that’s not enough to get her equal pay on the actual series she won all the awards for?

“It happened again!

There’s no point in dealing with my side [first] because, as usual, they come to me with half of what they want to offer David.”

That’s right, when she negotiated her new X-Files contract, Anderson was offered half of what her co-star, David Duchovny was being paid. These words, they make no sense.

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It’s not as if the actress has been languishing, waiting for work to come her way. Anderson is coming off two excellent Hannibal seasons and her continued starring role as DSI Stella Gibson in BBC’s The Fall, as well as prominent theater roles. If you think you’re shocked, reading Anderson’s comments, she’s just as dumbfounded as we are.

“I’m surprised that more [interviewers] haven’t brought that up because it’s the truth. Especially in this climate of women talking about the reality of [unequal pay] in this business, I think it’s important that it gets heard and voiced. It was shocking to me, given all the work that I had done in the past to get us to be paid fairly. I worked really hard toward that and finally got somewhere with it.

Even in interviews in the last few years, people have said to me, ‘I can’t believe that happened, how did you feel about it, that is insane.’ And my response always was, ‘That was then, this is now.’ And then it happened again! I don’t even know what to say about it.

“It is… sad. It is sad.”


Because Anderson isn’t playing the daft damsel on a lot to Fox’s used car salesman routine, she obviously was able to negotiate the same salary as Duchovny, but whomever pulled this stunt should really be embarrassed as fuck. It’s beyond disrespectful to Anderson, and it serves to once again illustrate just how far women still have on the road to equality.


(via THR and The Daily Beast)

Cindy Davis, (Twitter)