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From “The New York Times,” I’m Anna Martin. This is “Modern Love.” We are so happy to be back. We’ll be in your feed every week from here on out, bringing you stories and conversations inspired by the “Modern Love” column. We’ll talk about love, relationships, and today, the power of sexual fantasy, with actor Gillian Anderson.

Hello.

Hello. Are you ready?

I’m ready.

Here we go. I’m going to do something that I hope will be OK with you. I’m going to read a tiny bit of fanfic for you.

Oh, wow.

I know. I know. I know. OK, we found a good one, I think. Normally, I would not just read some fanfic I found on the internet to an Emmy and Golden Globe winning actor, the star of “The X-Files,” “The Crown,” and “Sex Education.” But hear me out — Gillian’s characters have been inspiring fans for 30 years. There are whole websites dedicated to X-Files fanfic.

And Gillian’s just put out a new book all about fantasy and desire. It’s called “Want, Sexual Fantasies by Anonymous.” It’s a collection of letters that Gillian curated from women all around the world who detail their deepest, most secret desires. So I figured, X-Files fan fiction? Fair game.

OK.

OK, the title is “The Complete and Utter Agony of Finding Happiness” by CultureIsDarkBeer — that’s their username — published January 2024.

Oh, in 2024, even.

Very, very recent.

Oh, wow.

People are — oh, of course, Gillian, this is still happening. You know wh I mean. This didn’t stop.

Oh, wow, OK. I’m only familiar with the ancient ones, with the vintage Mulder-Scully fanfic.

OK, here we go. [CLEARS THROAT]

Here we go.

“Mulder’s hands stayed chaste, stroking her cheek as they kissed, rubbing her back. Scully’s hands had different intentions, trailing from his chest to linger along his abs, wandering to the button of his jeans. He felt himself thicken as he felt the pressure of her finger trace the round embossed brass. He watched as Scully stroked him, sending a bolt of pleasure up his spine. Dang, she was sexy.”

[LAUGHS]:

“Mulder, she breathed, as he joined her timid eyes. It made him almost self-conscious. Hell, this wasn’t just a woman. This was Dana Katherine Scully.”

Oh, my god. That was good. I like that. I wish I could be a fly on the wall and watch that happen. My favorite bits were the “dang” and the “hell.”

“Dang, she was sexy.”

Dang, she was —

OK, we did change that from another more explicit word, but I think the “dang” suffices. OK, you know what I love about this fanfic is Scully is the one who’s initiating this sexy encounter with Mulder. Do you feel like Scully —

Her hands had a different agenda.

100 percent. He’s like, hands up in the air. She’s like, hands somewhere else. Do you think Scully would have done that on the show?

No. I have a feeling that Scully is herself quite chaste and missionary, shall we say? However, there are other characters I have played who would put Mulder’s antics and addiction to porn to shame.

Yeah, I wanted to ask about some of those other characters you’ve played, because it strikes me that you’ve gotten to kind of try on different sexual personas through your characters. You mention Scully’s chaste personality, for example, and how that contrasts to others you’ve played. I’m thinking about Stella Gibson from “The Fall.” In that show, Stella is a high-ranking, high-powered detective. And she really goes after what she wants. Tell me about the way Stella Gibson approaches sex and desire.

Well, from the first moment that we meet Stella Gibson, she is very comfortable in herself.

She is comfortable in her clothes. She is comfortable with her intelligence and her ability to communicate with anybody. In the first episode, we witness her trying a pickup line on a young detective.

She tells him what hotel room she’s staying in.

There’s barely an interview that I’ve done where that scene hasn’t been brought up. And so clearly, it was surprising and unique, if not shocking. And perhaps she was doing something that would be otherwise considered taboo, which begs the question, how is it that a modern woman, in this day and age, that that behavior, so to speak, would be still considered shocking?

Totally.

And you see it in how she moves and how she — but it’s her sensuality and her connection to her sexuality is very much for herself. You don’t get a sense that she’s trying to show off or she’s wearing particularly short skirts or revealing clothes. She’s just confident and sure of herself. And that also shows up in how she goes after what it is that she wants in the bedroom.

Right, and she’s embodied in that way. I wonder, did playing Stella in this way with this, as we’re talking about, bold sexuality, did that leave an impression on you off-screen? Did it change you somehow?

It did. I mean, in the surface level of it, I started to think, man, I need to wear some sexier underwear.

[LAUGHS]:

Man, I need to wear some more stylish clothes in my everyday life.

That was not what I was expecting.

Because these clothes feel really good, and I feel sexy in them. But also, I think I put sex in a box that would be opened when in relationship. And I started to think about it as being much more accessible and a potential floating out there and not tucked away somewhere. And so, yeah, it awakened something in me. And I was single and, um —

uh-huh.

[LAUGHS]: And you have a whole new set of underwear, as you mentioned before. So we can imagine the rest. No, I mean, when you’re talking about sexuality, not as this sort of sequestered, hermetically sealed thing in the corner of your life, but this thing that surrounds you, you’re sounding like another one of your very iconic characters, Dr. Jean Milburn, in Netflix’s “Sex Education.”

[APPLAUSE]

This is a character who has this open, very comforting, very candid approach to talking about sex.

And outside of acting, you’ve kind of taken on this role as an ambassador of sexual openness. I’m thinking, obviously, about your new book, “Want,” but also, you have a soda brand you started called G-Spot. Or you went to the Golden Globes this year in a dress embroidered with vulvas. Was it roles like Stella Gibson and Dr. Jean Milburn that led you to do that?

Yeah. Yes, indeed. It’s odd because I think the seed started with Stella.

Hmm.

But I think in playing Jean and being a part of that show that was so unabashedly free and out there, shameless and fearless, it was a topic that was at the forefront of my life. And I think because of that, it made sense as to why I was approached initially to do this book.

Yeah, can you talk a bit more about the book? It’s called “Want.” It’s out this week. Tell me more about it.

So the project is a collection of fantasies written anonymously by women around the world and sent to me. We had thousands of women send in letters. It’s very raw and profound at times and beautiful and incredibly sexy and erotic. There’s letters about infidelity, exploitation, consent, coercion, love, hate, pleasure, pain, the range of experience, fantasy, fears, desires, identity.

The only thing I’d add is don’t read this at work like I did.

[LAUGHS]:

I mean, I have read this entire book, and these fantasies are truly remarkable. They’re vivid. Some of them are completely surprising — actually, probably all of them are surprising just in the sense that these women have created, in a lot of cases, these incredibly richly detailed fantasy worlds that a lot of them returned to time and time again.

No spoilers. I’m just going to give you some of my favorites. There’s this woman who fantasizes about seducing her therapist, one about being ravished by a crowd of masked thieves, which is kind of a Marvel movie-esque type thing, or a woman who rescues her lover from a zombie apocalypse. There’s even a fantasy about a door handle, which I’ll stop there. I was so surprised by how specific these fantasies are.

Yeah, but I think opening all of this up to conversation and putting it out there, if stigma around even the idea of having these kinds of thoughts is lessened and it can become more of an open, accepted topic, then is it possible that women will feel less shame about actually asking their sexual partners for more of what it is that they might want?

Yeah.

To me, it almost feels like there’s a whole area of joy that can be had in someone’s life that is being untapped.

Yeah, and because you’ve had this experience, reading and reflecting on so many women’s very personal writing, we were so excited when you wanted to join us to choose a story from our archive. The essay you’re going to read today is not as explicit as the fantasies in your book.

It’s also not anonymous. We know that it’s by a woman named Ali Rachel Pearl, and it’s called “On Tinder, Off Sex.” And in this essay, Ali Pearl writes about a time in her life when the only sex she’s having is in her memories and in her fantasies. Can you talk a bit about why you were drawn to this essay, Gillian?

I love how revealing the author is, how introspective she is, and also the idea that there’s something wrong with her somehow that she hasn’t had sex for a couple of years. And rather than fighting that concept, in a way, she dives into it to try and discern to what degree it might actually be true, even if on the surface, she thinks that, well, surely, it’s not.

She really investigates what’s going on a deeper level for her. And that’s also, I think, something that happens when reading our book, “Want,” is that it does encourage you to start asking questions about how you feel about sex and where it sits in your life and what it is that you might want that you’re not getting.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

When we come back, Gillian reads the “Modern Love” essay, “On Tinder, Off Sex.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

“On Tinder, Off Sex,” by Ali Rachel Pearl.

“When I called my health clinic last month to refill the birth control pill prescription I’ve had for 10 years, I was put on the line with a doctor — not my normal gynecologist — who began asking questions about my health.

‘It says on your form that you’re interested in both men and women, but that you do not use alternative forms of birth control outside of the pill,’ he said. ‘That’s correct,’ I said. To preempt a safe sex lecture, I told him I hadn’t had sex in two years, so it was really a moot point.

‘So you’re secondary abstaining then,’ he said, surely making note of this somewhere in my records. ‘Well, I think accidental abstaining is more appropriate,’ I said jokingly, attempting to maintain some dignity in this conversation with a man I likely would never meet, who seemed to view me as some kind of morally reformed or seriously disturbed woman in my mid-twenties.

After we hung up, I googled secondary abstaining and learned that it refers to someone who is sexually experienced, but has chosen to no longer be sexually active, usually for reasons relating to religious faith, unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.

I am without faith in almost all respects. I have never been pregnant, nor have I had any STDs. I have never stopped desiring sex, and I have never identified as asexual. In fact, I frequently want to have sex with people, but I simply do not.

I’m secondary in a lot of things these days — secondary vegetarian, secondary sober, secondary non-smoker. But here is how my secondary abstaining departs from my secondary everything else. I quit eating meat because I developed a deeper concern for the environment. I quit smoking because it’s bad for you. I quit drinking because I have a problem with alcohol. But I never actually quit having sex. Sex just stopped being a thing that happened in my life.

My most recent sexual experience was two years ago in a barn in Kentucky with a photographer I had met in Ohio eight days before. I was temporarily living on a farm in Independence the day he drove from Columbus to spend the afternoon with me. I bought a bottle of larceny bourbon the night before in preparation and had consumed half before he arrived. I had never had sober sex with a new partner, and I wasn’t about to start with a guy I barely knew.

I know many people are adept at this sleeping with strangers thing. I have never known how to do this. I have never known how to go from, ‘So what’s your name?’ to having you in my bed, or me in your bed, or us in the back of a car in the parking of a Target.

The photographer and I had sex twice in one evening. It was everything television and film tells me sex should be — spontaneous, unhesitating, in an exotic location. It was on a wooden bench swing near a river in the trees behind the barn. And then it was in the barn in the summer heat and humidity.

Afterward, we walked hand in hand down the main road leading to town, giggling while we watched the fireflies appear and disappear around us in the fading daylight. It was romance and whirlwind. It was sweat and sweet.

That last morning in Kentucky, I woke at 6:00 AM to the soft sound of rain and the tinny sound of Bon Iver floating from his cell phone speakers. He photographed me while I packed my clothes, and I remember him telling me that airports are romantic because they’re where people come to understand what they feel about each other.

It’s not that I haven’t wanted to have sex since then. It wasn’t one of those bowl you over summer romances. It was what it was — fun, invigorating, kind. But we lived 3,000 miles apart, and I was still heartbroken from my previous relationship.

If I were to update the definition of secondary abstaining I discovered through my Google search, I would add the following to the list of reasons someone may stop having sex — failed relationship, broken heart, and being cheated on after a near proposal by the man you spent your whole life loving.

Maybe this is where faith comes in. Maybe my secondary abstinence isn’t in allegiance to God, but to my own broken heart and the fear that seems to produce a kind of magnetic repellent whenever I come close to someone I desire.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

My friends don’t seem to understand my secondary abstinence. They ask if I’ve had sex yet. ‘How can you go so long? they ask. ‘I can’t imagine.’

They say, ‘You have to lower your standards. Go to the bar more. Join a dating website. Make really good eye contact. Get rid of your hang ups. Be more open. Stop being afraid. It’s just sex,’ they say. ‘You have to stop refusing to sleep with people just because you don’t immediately want to marry them.’

My secondary abstinence is the wallflower type, sitting quietly on the couch at the party, making everyone else feel a bit more awkward for having a good time. Every night that I go to a concert or a party, every day that I walk around the neighborhood, I find my secondary abstinence trailing me like a sad ghost or an unwanted dog.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It’s not as if I haven’t tried to move on from this phase of my life. I joined Tinder. I sat in my friend’s apartment punctuating our conversation with questions like, ‘Who is supposed to write to whom on this thing?’ And, ‘Why do so many guys have photos with tigers? Do you have a photo with a tiger?’ I asked my friend how to tactfully respond to my most recent Tinder message from a man named Dakota, who teaches yoga and doesn’t have a tiger in his photo.

I found the profile of a man whose name is probably Matt and told him, ‘I’m new to this Tinder thing,’ and asked him how it works. ‘You match with a bunch of people, no one ever messages each other, and no one ever has sex,’ he responded. Well, that seemed unlikely to me, but he was all the way down in Long Beach, California, which is too far to drive for sex. So I cut my losses, and we unmatched each other.

When a friend recently asked me, ‘Why do you think you never have sex?’ I fell back on all the clichés. I told her, ‘I just want to focus on myself for a while. I’m afraid of getting hurt. Strangers are gross. I want to be in love first. I don’t have time to meet people. Los Angeles is impossible.’

But I’m not sure I believe any of those reasons apply to me. I focused on myself my whole life. I’m worried about getting hurt, but no more than most. Some strangers are smoking hot. What is love anyway? I have plenty of time. Los Angeles is full of men and women of all shapes, sizes, and backgrounds. And those men and women populate every restaurant and yoga class and dog park in my life.

There is a woman I sometimes love — a death penalty investigator too fresh out of a breakup from the woman who broke her heart. There is a man I sometimes love, a writer and lead singer in a hardcore punk band who constantly declares, I don’t have sex, and I don’t do love, in the same moment that he sways closer to my face, nearly, but not quite giving one of us the opportunity to make a move.

The man I sometimes love tells me, love is a leaky boat. The woman I sometimes love tells me the blooming jasmine in Los Angeles reminds her of walking in school in Egypt as a teenager. And in her head, she is somewhere far away from here, from us. We don’t have sex, but we have intimacy.

It’s not that I’m choosing to abstain from sex in these situations, but that sex seems to be choosing to abstain from me.

In my imagination, the sex I have with each of them when I’m riding my bike home from work, or when I’m stuck in traffic on the freeway, or when I’m otherwise far away from myself is epic.

It is all dark rooms and brick walls, aggressive and gentle. It’s the kind of sex that makes a person fall in love instantaneously. Except we never have sex. And we never fall in love. We fall into almost love. And then life takes us away from each other. And without that memory of skin against skin to connect us across distance and time, we become, once again, strangers.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

We’ll be right back.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

What a beautiful read, Gillian. Can I ask, did you relate to anything in that essay?

Yeah, I mean, there’s certainly been times in my life between relationships when I — you know, the time I’d spoke about before where I was single and suddenly decided that, actually, I could be more active in the sex arena than I was.

But I know that place of feeling like it wasn’t something that I wasn’t doing. It was something that wasn’t doing to me, you know, in some way. But I think people can get in the habit of that. I think it’s an easy habit to get into, and as we spoke about before, just kind of put it in a box.

I like what you’re saying, this kind of mode of being like, I’m not having sex because sex is not happening to me, as you put it. But also, it is, in some ways, in your control. And I think that this essay is kind of an Ali Rachel Pearl working through what is in her control and what isn’t.

Yeah, I wanted to — you just reminded me of something, though, which is there was a period of time I’d been single for a while. I was living in Los Angeles. I was between relationships and maybe early 30s. And I just started to do really intense Ashtanga yoga on a regular basis. And I felt more connected to myself than my body than I ever had before that I think in my life.

And there was a period of time where people were just popping up out of the woodwork. Like literally, I would be anywhere. I’d be standing at a Starbucks, I’d be walking down the road. It was just like, what has happened?

OK, I’m going to say this — do you think it was the yoga, or do you think it was because you are also Gillian Anderson? I will say maybe both.

But I was Gillian Anderson before I started doing yoga, and it had never been like that before. So there was something, I think, that I was vibrating, really comfortable in my skin and with myself. And I probably felt a bit more confident and more effervescent or whatever. And people were responding to that.

So, in this essay, Ali Rachel Pearl writes that in this period of her life where she was not having sex, she was wrestling with heartbreak after a big breakup. Do you think that the sex she’s experiencing in her imagination could be serving an important purpose for her? And if so, what do you think that purpose was?

Oh, sure. I mean, I think it’s — well, one, it’s a place where we can be in control, right? We are the director of our fantasies. So I also think that just allowing oneself, because it’s very possible to, when you’re hurt, to just completely close off from the world, right? So there was a fridge magnet I saw once — I think I might have bought — that said, “Love like you’ve never been hurt.” I mean, that’s such a big statement.

It’s so hard, though.

It’s so hard. But when you’re hurt, don’t necessarily want to think about opening yourself up, whether it’s in fantasy or not. So to allow yourself to embrace that safe space where you can still show yourself that you are active and vibrant and —

Huh.

— wanted and needed and found attractive and can experience joy and all of that, even though you’ve been hurt, is probably quite a healthy place to live.

What about for people who are having sex in the real world? Do you think those people should cultivate their fantasy life while in a relationship, for example?

Oh, sure. No, I think fantasy life in relationship is really healthy. I mean, some people can’t reach climax without a fantasy helping to get them there. And I would also say that sharing it with one’s partner is an incredibly healthy thing to do and can potentially enhance the sex that a couple can have if you feel that you can put yourself in a vulnerable enough position to be able to share it, because they’re very intimate details, and it can only bring people together.

Gillian, I know that you submitted your own fantasy to the book anonymously. And you’ve said in multiple interviews that you’re never going to tell which one is yours. But I’d be remiss to not try. Can you tell us? I’m sure the answer is going to be no.

Not on your life. [LAUGHS]

Can I then ask, what did it feel like? You talked about the bravery of these women to write down, put pen to paper, for their fantasies. What did it feel like to do that for yours and to write it down?

It took me a while.

Hmm.

I felt resistance — I’d get a certain distance, and I’d felt resistance is to writing down words that I would say willy nilly that could fly out of my mouth in completely inappropriate situations, yet somehow, actually putting them down on paper, and it wasn’t even that then I was going to press Send, and they were going to land with somebody at my publisher’s.

It was just the writing of it down. I thought, what is that? I mean, what is that?

I guess when you say, what is it, it’s so hard to answer that question, right? Because it’s everything. It’s being a woman in the world. It’s like the taboo nature of women’s sexuality that’s always been policed. It’s how our bodies, how we’re taught to feel about our bodies.

But I think that the important thing which you pointed to with these other women — and I’ll say maybe for you as well, although you told me this is true — is that you push past whatever “it” was, right? It is a quadratic act. And I do mean that. And reading this book, in fact, this collection of a bunch of these brave sort of radical acts is deeply inspiring.

Yeah, it’s inspiring. And I hope that it inspires women everywhere to ask themselves those same questions, even if they feel less shame around exploring areas that perhaps they’ve been nervous to explore before, whether in their heads or on paper. There’s great pleasure to be found in the freedom of that space.

Gillian Anderson, all I can say to close is, “Dang, she was sexy.”

Good ending.

One more time —

Good ending.

— for the callback. That’s it. That’s it. What a true treat. Thank you so much for this conversation. I had such a blast.

Good, good, good. Me, too. Thank you.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

OK, before we wrap up for the day, I have a little announcement to make. We’ve got a “Modern Love” hotline, and we want to hear from you. If one of our episodes gets you thinking about a love story or a relationship that’s been a big deal in your own life, call us, leave us a message, and tell us about it. The number is 212-589-8962. I’ll repeat that, and I’ll put it in the show notes, too — 212-589-8962. Tell us about the way that love is showing up in your own life, and you might just hear yourself on a future episode. Don’t forget to leave your name and number so we can get in touch.

“Modern Love” is produced by Reva Goldberg, Davis Land, Emily Lang, and Amy Pearl. It’s edited by our executive producer, Jen Poyant, Lynn Levy, Reva Goldberg, and Davis Land. Production management by Christina Djossa. The “Modern Love” theme music is by Dan Powell. Original music by Aman Sahota, Marion Lozano, Rowan Niemisto, and Pat McCusker.

This episode was mixed by Daniel Ramirez. Studio support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pittman. Digital production by Mahima Chablani. Special thanks to Paula Szuchman and Lisa Tobin. The “Modern Love” column is edited by Daniel Jones. Miya Lee is the editor of “Modern Love” projects. I’m Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.

[MUSIC PLAYING]