Gillian Anderson: Why Talking About Sex Changed My Life & The Real Power Of Fantasy!

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0:27You inspired an entire generation of women to go lightweight for our silk shirt. You've empowered women. Can you feel that? Only in the last few years, actually, without even realising I'm saying this out loud for the first time. I loved sex education. It was your graduation into us seeing you as a sexually aware person. I think women feel unsafe sharing sometimes. That's not just about shame, about the fact that we even have fantasies. It's shame around asking for what you might want in the bedroom. You need to realise, if I were to want something, what would that actually be? Do I actually even like the sex that I'm having?

1:04And if I'm not, why don't I feel like I can talk about it? Something that came up again and again was about how many women fantasize about the man that they are with. To be looked at adoringly for who I am and how I look. And for that to be the thing that my partner is desiring. Not the perfect version of it. It's okay to look how you look, love who you love. It's okay to be all of these things. Literal light bulb moment. Well, there's a bigger light bulb. I don't know if I can handle that. The bigger light bulb is. You could change your whole of life. So today I am talking to Gillian Anderson.

1:43I mean, she doesn't really need an intro, but she's the star of The Fool, Sex Education. Interestingly, the roles that she's taken, X-Files, You know, we've seen her develop and grow and change with each of the parts that she's taken. But then, now she has. And I like the way they say this, submitted by Anonymous, collected by Gillian Anderson. She has written this book with many other people called Want. It's mega. Watch this. You're going to learn a lot. And if you're listening, give us a follow. bastards

2:30so before me I have sat a woman who has won so many awards I can't even count them on both hands or both feet but I mean Emmys like numerous amazing television awards film awards and let's not forget 1996 FHM Woman of the Year I wanted I wanted to end with that because we were both FHM girls but I was just excited if I got to number 99 you actually made it to number one um and I think at the time it was such a just a normal part of celebrity being a woman it was it was so accepted that that's what we did and for us to look back now it seems like such a crazy experience yeah um what's your take on Gillian from back then

3:35um actually I feel like on the one hand um I'm almost as naive as I was back then just in terms of, I mean, at the time that I was asked to be on the cover and why. You know, I don't think it ever occurred to me what my actual thoughts around it might be or that I might be able to steer it in a particular direction and not do X, Y and Z. And so I guess the fact that it was such, I mean, you know, have we moved on that much? Actually, really is a big question, I would have to say, if you look at the difference between, you know, covers of, you know, covers of magazines, between men's magazines and women's magazines.

4:31You know, I don't know. It still sells. and um uh but i think at the time i the the big change i guess was agency or feeling like i uh definitely feel like i have more agency and pause to you know take control over what it is that i'm comfortable with or not based on all the reasons you can imagine yeah I think what's been so nice for us, I feel we're quite lucky. We're similar in age. You're younger than me, but a similar kind of era. And we've been in this industry for roughly the same amount of time is how I guess you have enabled, you've empowered women. Can you feel that? I feel it now yeah I heard it you know in my 20s 30s and but I fully properly feel it and know it and have just started to embrace it I think over the last few years only in the last few years as being actually

6:00this is really important and I'm not going to shy away from it. Actually, I'm going to embrace it and lean into it because it's still really important. I'd like to go back to you as a nipper because I know that you spent a bit of time moving between the States and the UK. I think I think you moved to the UK when you were around two years old. Yeah. So you wouldn't really remember that. No. At all. No. But you grew up. Did you find, did you feel at home in the UK or did you feel like a visitor when you were growing up? I mean, as I got older, beyond two, I think I felt both. I felt at home, but at the same time, I was reminded on a regular basis by people on the outside that it wasn't my home because my parents were American.

6:57Right. And I mean, I was born in the States, but I felt, you know. British. I felt British, yeah. You grew up with a British accent, I'm assuming? Oh, yeah, totally. It was my first language, first way of speaking. because I think I think culture um in in in our blood is such an interesting thing when I I'm half French my mother was French and I used to go to France in the school holidays and I would become French on the plane I would get off the plane and be French and culturally I acknowledge that side of me. But I imagine if I'd have lived in one country and then another, then it's quite confusing.

7:44Like, which one am I mainly? I acknowledge that I'm British mostly. Where do you sit? Like, what do you feel? Well, the remarkable thing is that I don't think about it because it's such a norm and always has been in my life such a norm to move between the two and switch in whichever place I am between not changing languages but changing the way I talk because that's what I grew up doing. and you know if you ask me uh do I feel half and half or do I feel more one or more the other you know what does make sense to me in my brain is that you know my my um cells feel American but my soul feels British that that really feels right to me that's a great answer that I really um that's true for me yeah I wouldn't I don't think I would even with the current situation I don't think I would give up my American passport right the big question yes you know even though um and uh you know but I do feel if somebody said I could never live in the UK again I would I would really properly mourn it yes yeah but I didn't really ever mourn moving from the states because I knew I was always going to come back so you know it's it's complicated well I mean you're half and half yeah and that's a lovely it's um a luxury that lots of people don't have yeah yeah and and and uh it's um and it doesn't bother me really important well I think I think it's such an important part of somebody.

9:41And I guess like asking you about that is it tells me a lot about you as a person. So to know that your cells are American, but your soul is British is brilliant because it articulated perfectly. I kind of feel like I know you better just from knowing that. Yeah. Yeah. Good. When you moved back to the States, I think you were around 11. Yeah. and I read that you went to see well you went for therapy at 14. What was that about? Was that your parents kind of suggesting well Gillian we think that you might need some help or some support here? I was really struggling at the time with my mental health I think is how you refer to it today.

10:33So funny. and I was just struggling I was just struggling I was struggling with life I was struggling with relationships I was struggling um yeah all all relationships and so uh yeah that they suggested it and it was you know on on the one hand it absolutely saved me from myself um but by the same token, I wasn't 100 % honest with the therapist. And there was still something that I was too afraid to talk about. And there weren't consequences to that. I mean, I didn't, you know, but that tells you the degree to which I was still, you know, what I considered too bad or too much or too um yeah and i think i was also afraid that it would get back to my i didn't quite trust you know um my experience so far you know that you know i've i've pretty much always had a therapist since then and again would say that it's been a lifesaver um but i have learned how important it is to you know to talk about everything and to be honest yeah I think that's what I love about this book which I am going to deep dive into want later but that's tied up in that oh yeah shame yeah that that's that's what it was projecting well no my own my own my own shame and projecting further shame on my parents for what I was up to.

12:26I can relate in quite a big way. I mean, I went also was my parents suggested I talk to somebody when I was 15. I was honest, but it was actually ever something that had happened. And it was a relief to talk about that. but in terms of what I was doing secretly, clubbing or boys or drugs or things like that, I was hiding so much back then. I couldn't believe actually when I read about you starting to act how actually young you were when you got your first big break in television with The X-Files. you were what 24 when you actually got the part yeah what were you like as a 24 year old I think by 24 I'd been in LA I'd moved from New York to LA and I'd been in LA for about just under a year I think who were you with were you living with friends no I was actually living with a boyfriend I'd moved there with a with a guy I'd met doing a play in New York and And I went to visit him and sold my return ticket, which you could do in those days.

13:45Great. Yeah. Write somebody else's name on it and then they could use it. It's so casual. Do you even imagine? And then smoke in the back row. Yeah. And I was living with him when I got the job. And, you know, at every stage, I think, I felt so much more grown up than I was. And I know, you know, feel like we've talked about the degree to which that happens. You know, when you are in circumstances where you grow up very fast. I mean, I remember feeling like a grown up at 12. And certainly some of the situations or circumstances that I found myself in were only really appropriate for an adult anyway.

14:31So that exacerbated the feeling like I was older than my real age. So when I was 24, I was ancient. You know, I was so, you know, looking back. It's only really sometimes I think when we look back at what a 12-year-old looks like or what a 24-year-old looks like and responsibility of, you know, being on a number one hit TV show around the world for a 24-year-old. If I looked at my daughter at that age, I would have thought, poor child, you know, oh my God, how can you? And then a year later to have a baby in the midst of that. It was, you know, a lot, a lot all at once. But that's kind of been...

15:18Your life. My life. That's kind of, I've kind of, you know, I don't know whether that seared, you know, that experience seared the concept of a lot in my system. So that from that point on, my life has been a lot and then a lot and then a lot of a lot of a lot and more. But it's all me. I'm the one that makes these decisions. I'm the one that says, yes, I'll do that and I'll do that. And I'm going to make this and I'm going to create that. And on the side, I'm going to do this, you know. One of the reasons why I started this podcast, and it's called Begin Again, it's about trying to help somebody live the type of life that you've lived so that on our deathbeds, whenever that might be, we can say we really lived and die happy.

16:11Because I think if you feel regret, you know, you feel like to me you wanted something you I mean I I heard somewhere that you you lied about your age to get on the X-Files is that true so how old did you say you were I said I was 27 because because the character was 27 and I thought there's no way I was so I mean to begin with I thought there was no way in hell they were going to cast me anyway because I had done nothing before and this was going to be a very big show or they were hoping it was going to be a big show. And it was. And it was, but putting the responsibility of a professional onto the shoulders of a 24-year-old with no experience in my head seemed just so outlandish that maybe they would do that for a 27-year-old with no experience.

17:08I don't know. So I said I was 27, like the character. And I don't know if that contributed to doing the trick. But, yeah, it didn't cross my mind that I shouldn't or wouldn't lie to them because I wanted the job. But this is what I mean. It's that thing of taking the risk, doing the naughty thing to get to where you want. it's these type of experiences that make you feel alive the risk yeah um and and it's interesting because we were talking about shame and that horrible feeling from when but you also had this other side of you um of kind of naughty girl like i'm gonna lie about this because it might get me the job and i don't think i want me like this so i'm gonna that's quite a hustle yeah i am a bit of a hustler um I mean on the one on the one hand I don't feel like I am a risk taker I mean I've known you know proper risk takers in my life yes and they're quite exhausting risk yeah yeah and I don't I don't feel like I strive for that buzz and that uh you know energetically that kind of frisson but I do I guess I go after things if I have an idea about something that I think is is good or might help people or I do I do go after it and in a very often it doesn't it I don't think it ever occurs to me that I shouldn't or I can't and often I go after things before the risk part is I do it before I've actually fully thought through what the consequences are or they might be on my life for instance saying yes to so many things or thinking of creating so many things that I haven't thought oh well if that actually goes and happens that's going to happen at the same time as this and this and this and this and this and this and that's the bit that I'm starting to, it's not regret, but I think as you get older, starting to realize that there are consequences to my decisions and that there's a recklessness somehow in it that is both, I think, good, but also there's a recklessness that does have impact.

19:53And if I I also simultaneously want to, you know, be able to have more freedom to be able to say, actually, I'm going to go over here where my kids are. Because even if they don't really necessarily want me to be there, I can show up if I feel like I can spend some more time with them. As opposed to being simultaneously busy to that. You know what I mean? So that is what goes through my head now, which is, yeah. I mean, kids are really interesting when I've got three kids as well. and trying to juggle a career and be a mum is demanding. And I see that when they were young, was it a conscious decision to keep them separate from your public persona?

20:43Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely. A very conscious decision. And also I was very mindful of the time that I was away from them when I was young and had very strict rules about how long I would be away working on stuff, which is a huge luxury. Yes. You know, and I think one of, you know, I think our business is one of the only businesses where you actually have that kind of luxury when you get to a certain place to be able to say that and simultaneously be able to either, you know, afford to have help or be able to rely on a partner to be able to take, you know, to balance the weight with. So, you know, all of this is with the prerequisite of I've been unbelievably lucky both in my career to be able to make those choices and decisions, but also to have had, you know, parented with a my particularly with my boy's father, you know, who can and is interested in and wants to kind of, you know, be the main.

22:03Rain holder. I wouldn't be able to do what I do without that. It's a gift. Yeah, real gift. I want to talk about The Fall. Yeah. Because, I mean, I will never forget watching you in The Fall. Number one, I guess it was like a gripping, brilliant drama. but you inspired an entire generation of women to go lightweight bra silk shirt I was like this is the greatest look and cold rooms I mean I I literally changed the way I

22:52and what I think what I loved about it was that she wasn't overtly sexy you didn't she was serious she was good at her job she was just hot as fuck like it was did you consciously make a decision to make her like that or was this always her her role her part what did you bring to Stella? Well, one of the things that I found the most remarkable in reading the scripts when they landed with me was how little was described on the page and yet somehow through the dialogue and the action you got who these people were, who Stella was. And it was very clear to me when I sat down with the costume designer.

23:53We both, you know, we could have said it at the same time. It's separate. It's suede. It's leather. It's silk. Funny, isn't it? Yeah, it's so, it was, you know. And then when we did the fitting, I think back then, you know, it was sometimes what you do for jobs in the UK is you, the costume designer will take a room at Selfridges and bring in a rail. And she did. And every single thing on that rail ended up in the show. She just had an eye for what was going to work. And it was so clear. It was like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And when you wear something like that, does it help you become a seller?

24:41Oh, God, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I don't dress like that. And there were times when I was, there was actually, you know. I do. Yeah. Thanks to you. And you should. I mean, I don't, I remember thinking, I should dress like this more often. Because it felt so good, you know. And I immediately felt like her when I stepped into those clothes. And, you know, I've worn similar things and I've tried since her to kind of steer away from that look when doing other characters, of course, because you want them to be as different. But there was, I remember there was, even in terms of your question about did it help?

25:30Yes, absolutely. And always does, no matter what character. But, you know, particularly in that instance, Stella. But also it was the way they did her hair and the way it was curled. and there was a period of time where my hair was falling out because I was working on three jobs simultaneously where I didn't have wigs, so they were using my own hair. And so they decided that instead of the iron, they were going to use rollers because it was easier on the hair. Yes, but it made it look different. Well, it made it sit different on my shoulders. and I couldn't work I literally was struggling to be her that day and it was I couldn't fucking believe it I couldn't believe it was so weird I didn't feel like and I mean that was one of the biggest um uh lessons about the impact that you know the outside for at least me as an actor uh how much that influences and you know because very often I mean I remember when I was doing Thatcher I'd asked whether I could take one of the outfits home with me in her shoes because I didn't have anything that was even remotely that she would wear and just to feel what it was like to walk in those shoes and in those particular printed outfits and stuff.

27:04You were breathtaking as Thatcher. Thank you. The energy you brought to that was extraordinary. This episode is brought to you by Airbnb. Davina, what are you reading? This? Oh, it's a book about being mindful. So I've been thinking about doing this meditation retreat in India. Three weeks of silence, meditation, mindfulness, thoughtfulness, great food, yoga, and a few questionable poses. And you know what? I've been thinking about hosting on Airbnb again. because even if I'm off the grid, which I will be, an Airbnb co-host can help me with everything. With their co-host network, you can team up with a local co-host and they can help you with all your admin.

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28:34We tend to have 20 to 30 % lower creatine stores than men, which is frankly rude. So supplementing can give us a real edge. I mean, think improved strength, better recovery, more sustained energy. And because life throws a few curveballs at us, you know, like periods, postpartum, perimenopause, where energy, focus, resilience are key. Our sponsor, Ancient and Brave, added taurine, vitamin D and magnesium to their True Creatine Plus to help keep you, your energy, performance and daily well-being in the best shape. Plus, their powder's tasteless, so you can just pop it in your water, tea, smoothie.

29:16But what set Ancient and Brave apart is their commitment to sustainability. they're a b corp and members of one percent for the planet with two percent of their sales going directly to environmental causes so if you'd like 20 off your first three subscription orders go to ancientandbrave.earth slash planet so i think it's interesting because um obviously we went from stella yeah sorry i'm bouncing no no it's great i love it i love it we went from stella to Jean and Stella and Jean feels like the beginning. Jean from sex education. Yeah. Yeah. I loved Jean. Yeah. I loved sex education. I felt like for you, it must have been such a wonderful thing because you, did you feel like it brought me a completely new audience?

30:14Oh, totally, totally felt that. But also, I don't think I and this is where I, you know, when I talked about being naive. I often don't I respond to things on instinct. And it's only really afterwards that I realize why why I've done something or the impact that it potentially can have. And I knew that it was going to be fun and I knew that it was a good thing for me, the actress, to be working on comedy and for people in general to see that I could do comedy. And also to be working in such a new and fresh thing that was different from anything that I knew of or read before. but I had no idea and of course it's interesting because the you know the Netflix um execs did that they could see they know exactly what they had and they had exactly what Ben Taylor was creating um I didn't have a clue I just you know I should and and even you know I remember thinking while shooting it is this is this good is this gonna be good you know is this you know and it wasn't until I did the first season at Ed's when I thought oh she's great yeah actually how great that she's out there and and people are responding to her and how interesting that you know this isn't just for the kids I thought and and you know it turned out that it wasn't that through her in part it wasn't just for the kids and how grounding she in that house and their world was in the mania of the school and all the other storylines and stuff so you know i'm i'm i'm i'm pretty stupid when it comes that kind of stuff just to say something put the car in park jillian sorry put the comment don't ever say that about yourself ever i don't actually mean it me you are like mega i think what's lovely about you is that when you accept something you accept something with a beautiful naivety of like this sounds like an interesting job but you're not thinking you're not calculating that's a good thing yeah you you accept a job because you like the sound of it but you're not thinking this will get me to a nice young audience you know what i I mean, things happen to you by default and it's great, but it's not a calculated move on your part.

32:51No, it's not. But I also think that what I'm listening for when I listen to my intuition or instinct, my heart, I think I listen for without actually even realizing I'm saying this out loud for the first time is. is is the thing that that moves me or that feels important in some way and even if the important bit is just self-serving and it's because oh well you know how great to stretch a muscle to do comedy I mean let me talk about how important this was because firstly to have a show like that out in the world when you know the the nature of sex education at its best is challenging and archaic in the UK let alone when we were doing press Poland doesn't have sex education or didn't at that time I don't know whether the show helped but doesn't actually have it in schools you learn however you learn um and that right so but also just speaking of representation you know so many different characters and um sexualities and races and cultures and you know so many different versions of humans on that show that showed the audience worldwide that it's a it's okay it's okay to be who you are it's okay to look how you look It's okay to feel how you feel.

34:33It's okay to love who you love. It's okay to be all of these things that I think has, you know, it really, really had a positive impact on a lot of people and brought families together, you know, started conversations, brought generations together. Amazing for that. And I couldn't have guessed, well, firstly, going into that and not knowing that it was going to be not just as successful, but as watched, as appreciated, as embraced as it was. but then what I couldn't have known which maybe I did know because I was listening was the degree to which it would then have knock-on effects and this book for instance would not have happened were I to not have done that well not to have done that show um um and also you know i've got a a functional soft drink which would not have happened had i not done that show so it has had it's had a big impact on my life in fact i mean i was going to ask you about um being accepted as a sexually aware person i don't know the best way to describe it because it's not about being you're not overtly but sex education and a little bit the fool was like it was your graduation into us seeing you in a slightly different light but you you talk about the comedy in sex education but what I think is interesting you covered some really important topics for women you had a storyline with Amy Lou could you just talk me through that that storyline very quickly for anybody that hasn't seen such an education um well amy lou wood uh played a character called amy um helpful who um was on the bus one day i think on the way to school and um was uh sexually assaulted a man you know ejaculated on her jeans while she was standing on the bus and um and it really traumatized her and she didn't actually realize the degree to which it impacted kind of every area of her life it impacted um you know it impacted her sleep patterns impacted her friendships impacted her relationship and it was only somebody else i I think Maeve, her best friend Maeve, when Amy told her what had happened, you know, said, Amy, you've got to report this.

37:38I think what I found interesting in that story is the way in which we, as women, and maybe it's anybody, but how we have a tendency to brush things under the carpet when potentially or ostensibly traumatic things happen to us. that I mean I know I certainly do and have for my whole life I just kind of get on with my life and it's not until somebody else with some objectivity says to me whoa whoa wait a minute what's going on here and you need to take care of yourself or you need to address this or you need to report this and so you know Amy character Amy came to my character Jean at one point to talk through this and I gave her some advice as a therapist um uh you know as as a professional and um you know so much of it was about taking care you know taking it seriously taking what happened to her seriously uh not brushing it under the carpet accepting the fact that it was actually having an effect on her life not trying to trivialize it and address the bigger issue which is the degree to which um you know women are sexualized women can be um uh um attacked and what we now classify rightly as uh as a sexual attack i think you know sometimes is people would prefer to see it as actually something much more smaller than how we classify it.

39:31The expression I keep thinking of is don't make a fuss. It's that thing of don't make a fuss. It's that old-fashioned, it feels like a 40s, 50s, over. Women just don't make a big thing out of it. Yeah. And I was thinking how amazing it must be working on a show with storylines that teach you so much or give you so much to think about when you go home. Yeah. But also, you know, that, I mean, we've gone down quite an alley here, but, you know, at the time and during Me Too, the degree to which, you know, women were encouraged to share on social media how many times or how often in their short or long lives they had been, you know, harassed or attacked or raped indeed or whatever.

40:29And, you know, the percentage was like three quarters of women, if not more, had had that experience. And so it's important we make a fuss. You know, it's not nothing. It's an empowering time, I think. and also a very sad time for a lot of women that had had experiences happened to them and not said anything because they wanted to diminish it. Yeah. You said about sex education being a kind of stepping stone to want and I really want to get to want. Yeah. How did want come about? What was your thinking and how was it born? It actually, in the first instance, wasn't my thinking at all. It was my literary agent who had come across her mother's copy of My Secret Garden.

41:36Oh, wow. Yeah, so she had... So let's talk about My Secret Garden. Anybody that doesn't know what it is, because I think actually they should all go and buy it. Yeah. If they haven't read it. They've just republished it. And that's thanks to you. They're probably very happy about that. So could you just explain what Secret Garden is? So Nancy Friday was an author in the 70s and she decided that she was going to put together, she was going to ask her friendship group and her community to write in sexual fantasies to her anonymously. And she would publish them under the name My Secret Garden. and so it was you know a relatively small uh community cross-section of women but they were um some really really raw moving sexy um some dark some beautiful uh very powerful letters in the book that she published and it was it was a bestseller it was uh you know i'm sure it was banned in various places um but it was uh incredibly uh successful in europe and in the states and uh very often women would buy it and and uh and hide it in their bags or under their beds or yes i mean i bought men in love which was the men's fantasies but by nancy friday and it wasn't under the duvet job yeah yeah it would have been so shameful whereas this on the other hand is like say it loud say it proud yeah have it on the coffee table which is so brilliant Gillian yeah anyway yeah so so so my my literary agent because I'd been I since sex education I'd been asked uh or my agent had been asked whether by publishers various publishers whether I'd be interested in doing a a book talking to sex therapist or a book because if I were a sex therapists writing to women about you know sex or whatever and i'm not even sure whether she passed on any of those those requests to me but then she had an idea of um when she saw her mother's copy of my secret garden she thought actually this is interesting what if instead she were to do a modern day version of My Secret Garden and, you know, and show how far we've come or not between, you know, 2025 or 2024 when we published it and 73, which is when Nancy's Bridey's book came out.

44:21And then when I started to talk to her about it, what I was interested in, different from what Nancy did was to, because of, you know, the age that we live in, put a very wide call out. I was really interested in having as many women from as many places around the world as possible. Full representation. Representation, yeah. Representation of women, differently abled women and trans women and binary people. and um and so it's you know it is that and um and so we put the call out through blimsbury they created a portal and um and we got i think 1800 submissions in the in the month that we had the in the month yeah yeah i mean that's mad yeah and not all the submissions were finished they You know, they were started, I think, in the end.

45:24We had about, if I'm remembering correctly, we had about 900, which I'm quite grateful it wasn't more than that because it takes quite a long time to read. I think that was the equivalent of about 800 ,000 words or something. Yes. And so that really led to this book, and I wrote the introduction to the book and to the different chapters. We put the letters into chapters. Um, and. Did you go back and read Secret Garden again? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And did you compare? Um, I compared to the, well, yes, I compared. I, I don't think I'd realized, you know, cause I kind of skimmed it for, uh, for, uh, for sex education just in terms of you know thinking along the lines of that world and how open my character gene was um but it wasn't until uh I started working on this book that I properly went back and read it cover to cover and I was shocked at how and how raunchy some of it is you know there's part of me that you know could just completely stereotype you know but wanted to put ladies in the 70s into boxes of the masters.

46:49Surely they were more prim and proper than we are today. But there are some doozies in there. And so that was fascinating. I was assuming that our letters were because of the degree to which porn is such a big part of society today because of how much sex we you know we see it everywhere we see it everywhere magazines on telly on our phones um and it feels like it is so at our fingertips i i had assumed that conversation around it or the concept of fantasy and desire and particularly women's desire was going to have properly moved on yes and it hasn't as much as I would have thought that it would have because I mean I think there's you know there are there's a lot still about it's not it's not just about shame it's not just about shame about you know the fact that we even have fantasies or even shame to admit that there is a fantasy that that one might think about when either masturbating or having sex but the biggest one for me was was you know shame around the very idea of talking about it with one's partner or even asking for what you might want in the bedroom i think i think what's interesting about asking a partner is this idea that you are telling them a fantasy the idea of a fantasy is that it's not going to happen it's it's a fantasy because it's something that is safe you can think about it yeah it might happen if you if you both yeah say okay well we've talked about this for a couple of years like do you would you like to try and make this happen yeah or a couple of months whatever but actually genuinely a fantasy really is is a fantasy and it's safe yeah because it's something that you're thinking about but you have to have that conversation before with your partner to say please don't shame me when I tell you this it's taking a lot of courage for me to tell you this thing and I really need you to like be the same with me after I've told you not change in any way because I think women feel unsafe sharing sometimes oh yeah yeah and and you know on the one hand I I'm sure I'm sure that men do too because they go this is this is silly or this is it yes you know if they knew that this is what goes through my head if it's you know from the office you know yeah your your your wife or girlfriend might be absolutely hideous to that person from the office when they see them next yeah the office drinks at christmas or something like that one like not even want you to go to the office yes this was my team yes or whatever but i think what was what was remarkable about the book and the conversation that it started was because of the courage of the women who submitted the letters and the fact that not only were the readers being able to see, you know, there are people out there too who have thoughts and desires and feelings like I do or, oh, my gosh, mine is nothing like what is out there or, you know, but to me almost even more importantly is this thought process, which is hang on a second there is something that I think about but I've never actually even thought about it as fantasy and if I were to want something what would that actually be and in fact while I'm in the process of asking myself what it is that I might actually want do I actually even like the sex that I'm having?

51:14Am I satisfied with the sex that I'm having with my partner? And if I'm not, how am I complicit in that? And if I'm complicit in it, why don't I feel like I can talk about it? Is that me or is that them? And if it is me, why don't I try it and if it's them I need to think about that and have that conversation yeah this is this is amazing yeah why do I feel uncomfortable is it because I know that they're going to feel judged I know they're going to think that oh my god it's been so long and I've always been doing it this way and they actually want it this way I know that you know all of these things or there's going to be some form of backlash or judgment or whatever it might be.