During the initial run of Breaking Bad, and for several years after, Anna Gunn was exposed to a shocking amount of sexist hate for her portrayal of Skyler White. The actress famously wrote an op-ed for The New York Times detailing the extreme amount of vitriol she received up to and including death threats. Series creator Vince Gilligan is still haunted by the reactions all because Gunn’s character had the wherewithal to question her husband’s actions as he became a meth dealer, which ended badly for him by the way.
However, Gunn has recently revealed that the situation has improved as TV audiences are becoming more sympathetic to the female characters caught in the maelstrom of their male partners. While promoting her new role in Sugar, Gunn said that she’s noticed a change in the reactions she gets to Skyler.
And now, when people come up to me, it’s incredibly different because of all the seismic changes that have happened. There’s still a long way to go, but we really have made seismic changes since then. So people come up to me now and say, “You were the linchpin for me. You were the conscience of the show. You were what pulled me into the show.” Or they say, “The first time I watched it, I hated that character. But the second time I watched it, I realized, ‘Oh my God, that poor woman.’”
For the most part, Gunn is proud that she called out the sexist reactions with her op-ed, but she also gets why those reactions happened.
“It’s a weird phenomenon. People love the antihero,” Gunn said. “They want to be the one saying, ‘Screw you,’ to their boss, and, ‘I’m going to do what I want.’ But Skyler was the only one calling out the lie.”
Sugar streams new episodes Friday on Apple TV+.
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)