‘X Files’ Creator Says Studio Execs Asked ‘Where’s the Sex Appeal?’ About Gillian Anderson, Calls New Reboot a ‘Hard Job’ Since ‘Everything’s a Conspiracy’ Now
Oh my yes. When I answer who my childhood/adolescent celebrity crush was I have to explain that it was Dana Scully, not Gillian Anderson, the character who's a physicist, MD cop.
This is absolutely true. But also, Gillian Anderson is even more attractive now than she was when X-Files started - that woman has aged like fine wine! Which makes it a doubly stupid thing for the executives to be saying.
Sure she had it but her real appeal was the subtlety. She wasn't some bimbo beach babe she was a doctor, an agent a skeptic and a professional. What the executives wanted was the former because their opinion of their audience was somewhere at the bottom of a bottomless pit.
It's also worth noting that the presence of a character like Scully on TV resulted in a noticeable uptick in women applying for roles in agencies like the FBI (say what you will about three-letters but having more female representation isn't making them worse).
For people who know how hot Gillian is but don't remember or weren't alive in the 90s: the theoretical hottest woman on the planet in the 90s would have been a blonde with huge tits and toothpick arms and legs. Gillian is a smokeshow, but people were actually obsessed with Pam.
Peoples' brains have been broken. Nothing ever just happens anymore for so many people. They need a nice and tidy explanation for the chaos that surrounds them, so they turn everything into a conspiracy. A new X-Files series would only exacerbate that (unless they satirize them, though even then, they're not exactly the type of people who grasp satire).
Execs must really be blind. I watched X-Files for the first time last year, as a 25 year old, and both of them had sexiness flooding down them in every episode.
Scully's subtleness and her suit, and Mulder's hotheadedness with his shirts/t-shirts and tie.