Gillian Anderson has enjoyed a four-decade career spanning film, television and theatre.
Having risen to fame in the 1990s via her iconic role as FBI Special Agent Dana Scully in The X-Files, the 58-year-old British-American actress gained a new generation of fans as sex therapist Dr Jean Milburn in Netflix’s Sex Education.
She’s also won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in The Crown, but it seems that her latest movie, the Jane Schoenbrun written and directed Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, has attracted more attention than anything she has done before.
“I’ve been around for a little while, and one can only wish for this kind of response to a film,” says Anderson, who plays a reclusive former scream queen in this very meta slasher horror with a queer twist.
“It’s kind of crazy that a queer slasher film is getting more attention than pretty much anything else I’ve ever done.”
Read more: Review: Teenage Sex & Death at Camp Miasma offers bloody kills, satirical chuckles and queer romance
It’s kind of crazy that a queer slasher film is getting more attention than pretty much anything else I’ve ever done
— Gillian Anderson
She adds: “It’s fun, though. People are having such a strong reaction to it, but it’s bringing them a lot of joy. They feel like they’re part of the reveal and the story in a way.
“They’re taking real ownership of it, which is really delightful to watch.”
The film follows filmmaker Kris Williams, played by Hacks star Hannah Einbinder, who is hired to resurrect the Camp Miasma slasher franchise - which centres on a masked serial killer called Little Death - after years of lacklustre sequels and dwindling fandom.
But when Kris visits the original film’s star, Billy Presley (Anderson), she encounters a reclusive actress shrouded in mystery.
The two women soon become entangled in a blood-soaked world of desire, fear and delirium - not to mention diabetes-courting quantities of sugary snacks.
Read more: The Salt Path stars break silence over source material controversy
The film premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival in May, where it received the Queer Palm award and earned rave reviews.
Trans filmmaker Schoenbrun, who grew up as a horror fan, says the film is their most personal work to date, exploring themes of sexual trauma and dissociation.
Speaking about the queer themes in the film, Anderson says: “There’s always something about the filmmaking process that ultimately gets distilled into something quite serious because there’s so much focus.
“Even in sex scenes, for instance, it can get very technical: where the angle of the head is, where your body is placed and all that kind of stuff.
“But part of Jane’s own experience post-transition, which they’re very vocal about, is the degree to which so much joy has become a part of their life in a way that didn’t exist pre-transition.
Read more: Gillian Anderson confirms she has spoken to director rebooting The X-Files
“So it felt like there’s almost a celebration built into the film that is specifically about joy and pleasure.”
She adds: “Even with all the snacks, popcorn and gummies, it’s all part of an expansive experience of not just the horror genre, but of the film’s meta experience of it.
“You’re properly leaning into and jumping into the middle of that kind of gorging. You’re surrounded by all the candy wrappers, and the experience of a horror film in and of itself is something that is both dangerous and titillating, full of excitement and joy.
“That tension between all of those things is so much a part of what the film is about that you can’t help but feel joyful in the process of watching it.
“The people on the screen, the people in the audience, and the degree to which Jane has created this homage to the genre, cinephiles and fandom, it’s almost like, dare I say, an orgasm in and of itself, a celebration of exactly what it represents.”
Einbinder (31), who won an Emmy for her role as struggling comedy writer Ava Daniels in Hacks, says she has also felt the outpouring of love for the film.
“It’s been incredible,” she says.
“We’ve gone around to see folks at all these screenings - we were just in London, Montreal, Portland, San Francisco and New York - and seeing the critical response has been incredible.”
“But also, these early screenings before the film comes out are filled with people who are really, really passionate about Jane, the genre or the subject matter, or either of us in certain cases.
“It really does feel like the people this film is for are finding it, loving it and connecting with it. And that is the point of making work. You just want to feel that connection.”
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a homage to fan culture, explored through Einbinder’s character Kris and her fascination/obsession with Billy.
“I feel like we all have our version of that,” explains Einbinder.
“We all have figures that we idolise and have a little bit of a parasocial attachment to, whether it’s in the context of a franchise or a specific artist’s work.
“It’s interesting to have a fully well-rounded view of being a fan and also, in some cases, being the object of fandom.
“That really excited me about it, and I’m sure Gillian can relate, of course. The Billy/Kris dynamic starts in that way, and then you break down those kinds of illusions and that parasociality, and they really do form a connection.
“It does deal with something that I think both of us, in certain ways, experience, so it’s just interesting. It was really, really cool. I thought Jane captured that beautifully in the writing.”
Einbinder, who is bisexual, says it’s important to see explicit queer representation in film and TV.
“I think the thing that a lot of queer women have had to do, in the absence of media that represents two women in love, or a romantic story between two women, is infer and sort of create that where it isn’t inherently or explicitly expressed,” she explains.
“And it’s nice for something to be very open and literal and intentionally queer. So much of the queer canon, I would say, for queer women is made up of things that are queer-coded, but it’s nice to have more things that are explicitly and expressly queer and sapphic.”
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (15, 112mins) is in cinemas from today
