Anna Gunn's Dad Had the Most Dad-Like Response to Her New Role
Anna Gunn’s new role in Fox’s Gracepoint, a remake of BBC’s popular series Broadchurch, is one that still involves murder, lies and such. But it’s probably a nice step up from people on the Internet wanting her dead.
After playing Skyler White, the wife of evil but lovable meth-dealer Walter White on Breaking Bad, the murderous adventures continue in Gracepoint, where Gunn stars as Ellie Miller, a detective who’s investigating a 12-year-old boy’s murder.
Gunn, who did some research for the role, tells The New York Times:
“One of our producers led me to one of the female cops who helped solve the Jaycee Dugard captivity case. She’s an amazing human being. I specifically wanted to know what it was like to be a woman in the job and to be a mother. How does one balance that? I remember she said you have to go against a basic human instinct, which is to run away from something that’s scary, and you have to train yourself instead to run toward it. It’s like an imperative.”
Though I’m normally ugh on the topic of women and work-life balance, this idea of a woman cop’s motherly instinct is interesting. In this Variety interview, Gunn said one particular scene, in which they find the boy’s body, had her crying off-set.
Speaking with NYT about her family’s response to the show’s dark subject matter, Gunn references her dad’s loving way of encouraging his daughter to do something a little more, uh, less deadly, more lighthearted:
“All the things I’ve been in lately have been quite murderous. My dad has said: ‘Are you going to do a light comedy again? You’re very funny, Anna, and you don’t want people thinking you’re just all serious all the time.’ Which is a very sweet, parental thing to say.”
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