Gillian Anderson is feeling powerful. “I am,” she agrees, as she sits down with HELLO! at the launch for her drinks range G Spot's charity partnership with Wellbeing of Women.
“It's interesting because I feel like I've learned a lot from the characters that I've played over the years."
From Special Agent Dana Scully in The X-Files to Stella Gibson in The Fall, Gillian has played a long list of empowered women. Now, the 55-year-old star wants the women who have loved her characters to feel like they can feel powerful too.
"I think women can be incredibly powerful. I want other women of all ages, who have looked up to the characters that I’ve played, to explore what it is about those characters that they actually want, and whether they can embrace some of those attributes that already exist in them. Hopefully then they can own them more.”
This mission to empower women is something that’s been partly driven by one of Gillian’s most recent roles as Dr Jean Milburn in Sex Education. “Women centric issues have always been important to me but since doing Sex Education, women’s health has been a topic that has been brought to me quite a lot."
“There are so many taboos, oddly, even in 2023, that are still around discussion about women's bodies, about sex, about menopause." It's why the award-winning actress cares so much about the kind of sex education that children are receiving in school.
"A good percentage of youth out there aren’t really aren't getting messaging that is helpful and useful for them in terms of what protection to use." Gillian has even observed that it isn't always taught that the different developmental stages that girls and boys go through are all completely okay.
"There shouldn't be shame around it or judgement, it's always going to be icky. So why not be brave and have those conversations?"
Even menopause, a significant stage currently experienced by approximately a third of the UK's female population, is still a taboo topic. Earlier this year UCL discovered that a staggering 90% of postmenopausal women were never taught about the menopause at school. In fact, over 60% only started looking for information about it once their symptoms had started. Gillian has similarly found that many women simply aren't informed about menopause.
"I'm constantly struck by how many women of my age and younger know very little about menopause. It's just such a peculiar thing that in this day and age there isn't more out there that is accessible to women from a very young age."
"But also to young boys about what the other half of the population is going to be going through. It may end up affecting them as well in one way or another because they have sisters and mothers. And we actually have partners that may or may not be women."
G Spot has teamed up with Wellbeing of Women, the only UK charity funding all of women's reproductive and gynaecological health. It has helped drive plenty of key innovations in women's health, from the use of ultrasound in pregnancy to helping establish the link between HPV and cervical cancer.
HELLO! has also been partnered with the charity for the past two years, working together on our Menopause Workplace Pledge. With over 3,000 companies now signed up to put menopause on the HR agenda and to support menopausal women in the workplace, it’s been a huge success.
For Gillian, finding a charity collaborator who could help her in her mission to break down taboos across all age groups was important.
"It's important to me", she notes. "We realised that G Spot's audience has a huge cross section of women from those in their twenties to women in their eighties. And so we were interested in finding a charity that did the same thing for women."
"It's not just about the research, it's the fact that they actually serve women and women's needs, both their bodies and their health, but also with sexual wellness. That's a very important aspect of what we're about."
Gillian founded the drinks brand when she realised during the pandemic that she consumed too many high-sugar caffeinated drinks. In G Spot, she found an alternative that would not only satisfy her cravings, but contain adaptogens and nootropics which are meant to support brain and cognitive performance.