Gillian Anderson says the story of Amy in Sex Education should teach women an important lesson about how to deal with sexual trauma
"Well, Amy Lou Wood played a character called Amy, who was on the bus one day, I think, on the way to school, and was sexually assaulted, a man ejaculated on her jeans while she was standing on the bus."
"And it really traumatized her, and she didn't actually realize the degree to which it impacted every area of her life. It impacted her sleep patterns, it impacted her friendships, it impacted her relationship."
"And it was only somebody else, I think Maeve, her best friend, when Amy told her what had happened, said, 'Amy, you've got to report this.'"
"I think what I found interesting is the way in which we, as women, and maybe it's anybody, but how we have a tendency to brush things under the carpet when potentially, or ostensibly, traumatic things happen to us."
"I know I certainly do, and have, for my whole life. I just kind of get on with my life, and it's not until somebody else with some objectivity says to me, 'Whoa, whoa, wait a minute, what's going on here, you need to take care of yourself, or you need to address this, or you need to report this.'"
"So Amy, the character, came to my character Jean at one point to talk through this, and I gave her some advice as a therapist, as a professional."
"So much of it was about taking it seriously, taking what happened to her seriously, not brushing it under the carpet, accepting the fact that it was actually having an effect on her life, not trying to trivialize it, and addressing the bigger issue, which is the degree to which women are sexualized, women can be attacked, and what we now classify rightly as a sexual attack"
"I think sometimes people would prefer to see it as actually something much smaller than how we classify it."