Gillian Anderson

If you haven't already read Erik Henriksen's terrific review of this Sunday's return of The X-Files, do that! It's great. In a related story, X-Files star Gillian Anderson sat down with The Daily Beast to talk about her history with the show, and had some very revealing and interesting tales about meeting Duchovny for the first time and the audition process, but she also had sad stories to share—in particular the unequal treatment she received from studio bosses. From the Beast:

While Scully asserted her authority at every turn, Anderson found herself fighting just to stand on (literal) equal ground with her male co-star. The studio initially required Anderson to stand a few feet behind her male partner on camera, careful never to step side-by-side with him.

Things get worse from there because even though her character on the X-Files was wildly popular, Anderson was only paid half of what Duchovny was making, and it took three years of fighting back for her to receive equal treatment. While that's shocking enough, you'd assume times have finally changed, and Anderson would no longer have to put up with such discriminatory bullshit, right? GET READY FOR A BIG DISAPPOINTMENT.

The work Anderson put into securing equal pay back in the ’90s seemingly came undone when it came time to negotiate pay for this year’s event series. Once again, Anderson was being offered “half” of what they would pay Duchovny.

“I’m surprised that more [interviewers] haven’t brought that up because it’s the truth,” Anderson says of the pay disparity, first disclosed in the Hollywood Reporter. “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!

Lots of interesting and non-infuriating stuff in this interview as well... read it all here.