Gillian Anderson is inviting women from around the world to write her letters about their sexual fantasies.
But the star of Sex Education and The Crown isn’t just being nosy. She’s launching a major new project that will chronicle the sex lives of women from around the world.
Inspired by Nancy Friday’s revolutionary 1973 bestseller, My Secret Garden – a collection of women’s fantasies through letters and tapes and personal interviews – Anderson is compiling letters that will be published anonymously in a book that aims to be an “expansive and revelatory portrait of women’s sexuality and what it means to be a woman today”.
Anderson said that many women’s “deepest, most intimate fears and fantasies remain locked away inside of us, until someone comes along with the key”.
“Here is the key,” she said. “I want to hear from you... because when we talk about sex, we talk about womanhood and motherhood, infidelity and exploitation, consent and respect, fairness and egalitarianism, love and hate, pleasure and pain.
“Is there a fantasy you’ve never told anyone about? Something you’d share with only the most trusted of confidants, if anyone at all? Wherever you come from, whomever you do or don’t sleep with, whether you’re 18 or 80: I want to hear from you. Write to me, starting your letter ‘Dear Gillian’.”
In an op-ed for The Guardian, Anderson elaborated: “Since Sex Education was broadcast, friends and journalists started asking me if women sometimes felt compelled to share their sexual problems or fantasies with me. Well, they don’t. Which ultimately is what gave me the idea for a book…”
In the Netflix series, Anderson plays a sex therapist called Dr Jean Milburn.
She said that the letter collection, published by Bloomsbury, will most likely be called Dear Gillian.
Details on how to enter can be found here. Submissions are open from 1-28 February.
