Gillian Anderson Was Offered Half of David Duchovny's Pay for the New 'X-Files'

Scully > Mulder *sips tea*.

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Complex Original

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What kind of complete BS is this? Just ahead of the X-Files reboot (which premieres this Sunday, Jan. 24), Gillian Anderson, who plays the show's iconic Dana Scully, revealed to The Daily Beast that Fox initially offered her only half the salary of what David Duchovny would make as Fox Mulder. What the HELL? Open your eyes idiots, Dana Scully is the REAL MVP of X-Files

Unfortunately, this is something Anderson has dealt with for the seven years during the show's original run, which premiered in 1993. She noted that Scully was initially treated more like a "sidekick" than a partner to Mulder, and she wasn't even allowed to walk side by side with him on the screen, always just a few steps behind. "Maybe it was enough of a change just to see a woman having this kind of intellectual repartee with a man on camera, and surely the audience couldn’t deal with actually seeing them walk side by side!" she notes. 

Then she couldn't put up with this sexist shit anymore and put her foot down, eventually getting herself equal pay. She says: "I have such a knee-jerk reaction to that stuff, a very short tolerance for that shit. I don’t know how long it lasted or if it changed because I eventually said, 'Fuck no! No!' I don’t remember somebody saying, 'Okay, now you get to walk alongside him.' But I imagine it had more to do with my intolerance and spunk than it being an allowance that was made."

You would think that in the year 2016 Anderson wouldn't have to deal with this AGAIN—especially since, you know, she's been getting better and better while Duchovny, well, nevermind—but they tried to give her the short end of the stick AGAIN. Maybe they're scared she really is sucking the life force out of David Duchovny (which is absolutely true). Here's what she had to say about the wage gap, something a lot of women in the industry (including Jennifer Lawrence) has been addressing a lot more recently:

"Especially in this climate of women talking about the reality of [unequal pay] in this business, I think it’s important that it gets heard and voiced. It was shocking to me, given all the work that I had done in the past to get us to be paid fairly. I worked really hard toward that and finally got somewhere with it.

"It is... sad," she concludes. It really is a bummer. You deserve so much better, Gillian. 

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