As much as I love the frequency of Gillian’s social media messages, I do miss the lengthier fan messages that she used to post on GAWS. The post below was one of my favourites - and appropriate for today. I love how she includes some of our favourite MSR scenes...and, of course, when it got moist in the anteroom. ;)
March 2002
Question: Now that the X-files are ending, can you tell us what are some of your favorite memories of working on the show?
Answer: Some of my favorite memories of working on the show (and not necessarily in order of importance or weight or much of anything but the order in which I remembered them.)
Singing 'Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog' to Mulder in "Detour".
Shooting the kiss/bee scene in the movie.
Shooting the scene where Mulder shows Scully how to hit a baseball in "The Unnatural."
Shooting "Bad Blood" but especially the autopsy scene.
Doing the elephant autopsy in "Fearful Symmetry."
In the first season the crew used to crowd around a t.v. screen on Friday nights and watch the show over lunch. That was fun and exciting for us.
I remember when the casting director told me I had the job after the final network audition and I had to drive a fellow auditioning actress that I knew back to her hotel knowing that I had the job and not letting on or being able to talk about it.
Shooting the graveside scene in the pilot in forced freezing rain at some ungodly hour in the morning and trying to remember my name let alone whole paragraphs of dialogue.
Shooting scenes in the snow in Vancouver wearing a skirt and high heals and trying not to slide down hill...or having to use an umbrella so that my hair did not have to be blown out before every take.
Telling David in his trailer that I was pregnant and him telling me that he felt his knees buckle. Blue, as a puppy was lying sick on his bed behind him, having just been spayed.
Watching Jim Rose do his famous genital tricks in his trailer during the shooting of Humbug.
In one of the very first episodes, there's a scene where Mulder and Scully are to look at red lights in the sky that may be UFO's and follow their flying path. David and I were standing on a windy hilltop looking out onto the pitch black heavens with the cameras on our faces and being directed where to look in EXACTLY the same place at the same time (up down left right)...but with NOTHING TO LOOK AT AS A GUIDE! It was absurd.
Shooting Scully and Mulder's final kiss scene at the end of "Existence."
Shooting the dance sequence at the end of "The Post-Modern Prometheus."
I remember sitting at a wooden table with David on the set when Pendrell was shot, and David telling me about this date he had with a woman whose name he would not tell me, but it was kind of like the tea that you drink.
Sitting in a luncheon booth on the North Vancouver lot with David Nutter and for the very first time going over a script with a director beat by beat and how exhilarating that was to be creative that way and have someone care what my feedback and impressions and instincts were. The script was "Beyond The Sea."
Shooting the scene where Scully's stomach is pumped with air in an abduction sequence and trying not to reveal that it was actually a pregnant belly being shot. I'll have to show that scene to Piper one of these years.
Lying in a hospital bed on set ten days after giving birth to Piper. Hooked up to tubes and wires and drifting in and out of sleep while they shot around me and being wheeled to and from the bed in a wheelchair. Surreal. I'd just been there!
Shooting a scene in a rowboat in the middle of a lake all by myself for hours and my lactating breasts getting so swollen that I thought I might explode.
Shooting a scene in an episode about cats where Scully has to be attacked in the face by a cat but I am allergic so they built a cat on a stick covered in bunny fur whose arms could be operated by some poor special effects guy. So here I am "struggling" with this fake bunny/cat in my face pretending to get scratched and be terrified when the fake fur keeps sticking to my lipstick and going up my nose and Kim Manners and I cannot stop cracking up at the ludicrousness of it all.
Lying on the floor eight months pregnant and being pushed by someone across the floor to simulate me "crawling" because I was so big and my belly was in the way and I could not do it myself. I think it was "Duane Barry."
Sitting in the back of a jeep on one of the stages pretending to be attacked by imaginary (CGI) green bugs who are going to cocoon us and suck our life out of us...flailing away at them with all my might and then whenever we cut, turning to a big garbage can to my left and throwing up because I had horrible morning sickness.
When Chris Carter walked into my hospital room a day or two after Piper was born and was stopped in his tracks by the sight of this living being propped up beside me. We sat in silence for a long time.
Talking to Chris on some payphone outside some restaurant a couple nights before I was to go back to Network for the final audition, and him giving me notes on how to dress more 'streamlined' for the Network Execs... I borrowed a suit.
Talking to David for the very first time outside the audition as he chatted up the girls, and commenting on the fact that I was from N.Y. and not really meaning FROM FROM, but the disappointment which flashed across his face when I qualified that I had only actually lived there a couple years. He moved on to someone else.
Experiencing Rob Bowman directing for the first time, setting up elaborate shots and the crew standing around thinking what is this new guy doing spending all this time with these fancy angles...cut to...the established norm. And thank God.
The last day of shooting in Vancouver when the make-up artist had to redo my make-up three and four times before every take cause I was crying so much. I imagine the same will be said in a little over a month. We won't get anything shot.
I know it seems ridiculous that I might only have thirty memories over nine years but I am afraid that is the best I can do and still have you all read it before the end of the month.
http://www.gilliananderson.ws/messages/archive.shtml
