Here's a fact: most of the television you remember fondly from your childhood will turn out to be rubbish.
Take MacGyver, for example – a show in which a cowboy displayed rudimentary engineering skills that would confound MIT graduates. Or Alf – the opening sequence of which shows him spying on a woman in the shower, hassling a teenage girl and getting all touchy-feely with a little boy? 'Friendly alien'? Fucking pervert, more like.
Some things do manage to stand the test of time, however. Like cult show to end all cult shows The X Files.
Just don't expect Gillian Anderson to agree with that.
Anderson – who spent about a million years starring as Agent Dana Scully, forced contractually to stay with the series even when it became awful and no-one watched it anymore – has recently been reflecting with Stella magazine on her time in Spooky Mulder's basement:
"I couldn't get out of it. I didn't have a choice. I had to sign a contract for five-and-a-half-years before I even went to my first audition – when I didn't know if I'd got the part. Back then I was all innocent and I thought, 'Wow that sounds wonderful.' But then, when I started, I realised I'd be in a Canadian wood working 16 hours a day for nine months a year. And the reason I stayed so long was because the only way I could get more money was to commit myself to doing it for another couple of years."
So… she was skint, then. Well, that kind of explains why she stuck with a once-fantastic show once it hit its seventh season downfall and teamed her up with the T-1000 and that woman from Mystic Pizza.
The experience has actually left Gillian a touch bitter:
"My God, I don't even watch television. I don't like television. I never have liked it. The whole concept of sitting down in front of a TV feels like one of the things that's destroying society, as far as I'm concerned."
A fair assessment. Oh – apart from The Wire, of course. And The Sopranos. And South Park. And Deadwood. And Tom Goes To The Mayor. And 24. And Entourage. And Drive. And Lost. And Heroes.
And – most importantly – upcoming HBO series Hecklerspray Shoots Russell Brand In The Face Several Times Over.
Although, to be fair … we're still trying to work out what happens beyond the pilot.
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Viking Lumberjack says
Haven’t we all had it with these whiny celebrities? What the hell would Gillian Anderson be doing if she hadn’t landed that job? Most likely, a whole lot of nothing. She’d be at some rudimentary job reviewing insurance contracts all day like a certain Viking, instead of having the fascinating history of having prepubescent teens masturbating repeatedly at the thought of her while she made lots of cash. OK, the whole prepubescent masturbation thing doesn’t sound so terrific, but the money is better than what the rest of us have been doing.
So, to all of the whiny celebrities: shut the hell up, you whiny celebrities, because you got exactly what you asked for and were paid better than 99% of the rest of us, you whiny celebrities.
Gilbert Wham says
As far as your putative show goes; this is EXACTLY why we need cloning laws relaxed. Then you can have a new Russel Brand to shoot every week.
iulia says
I loved (and I still love) Scully so much (and Mulder, also). They were perfect people. They had a lot of flaws, they were beautiful in a special way(not the freaky perfect hollywood one), they were intelligent and had a lot of humour. All that was perfect to me. But they were just the creation of some intelligent writers, that mixed wright the ingredients. I love gillian also, but I don’t know why she always hated her character so much. she is different from scully, but I think sometimes she just goes to far by saying she hated x files. I think that scully forced her to be more classy.
Jane says
Don’t easily believe what you read in the tabloids. Gillian did NOT hate working in the television series. Read what she has to say at her official web site: http://www.gilliananderson.ws/news/
“Did I regret it or do I regret it now? Not for a second.”