Daily Mail Interview
Posted at 9:32 AM (PDT) on Friday, March 20, 2015

Clarkson got a friend in X Files' Gillian Anderson who says Top Gear host is an 'institution'
By Baz Bamigboye
Daily Mail: 19 March 2015

Award-winning actress Gillian Anderson said Top Gear hooks its audience like a 'testosterone-filled injection’, and is devoured by fans like TV ‘comfort food’.

The star, who is in talks to resume playing FBI Agent Dana Scully in an X-Files TV re-boot, and will play murder detective Stella Gibson in a third season of The Fall, told me that embattled host Jeremy Clarkson was ‘very sweet’ to her when she was a guest driver on the popular BBC show recently. ‘People rely on it,’ she said. ‘He’s become an institution — and the show’s an institution.’

The actress, who in addition to her TV work has been nominated for an Olivier award for her scorching performance as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire at the Young Vic, told me the hysteria over Clarkson’s suspension was understandable, because fans addicted to his controversial style weren’t ‘going to get their fix any more’.

In any event, Anderson understands all about satisfying TV viewers. She and Jamie Dornan, the hunter and the hunted, served up some pretty tasty fare in Allan Cubitt’s electrifying The Fall. She will once more don Detective Superintendant Gibson’s sensual silk blouses to film a third series next year. Oh, and some of those seen in season two will be back in series three. ‘She’s not going to suddenly get all new blouses!’ Gillian exclaimed. ‘The realism is important to me, and she’s obviously not going to let go of that wardrobe. So, there’ll be a mixture of old and new.’

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