Anna Gunn was on The Late Show last Friday and I’m reporting it because I just love her and I want to support her career. She got dragged for playing a character on Breaking Bad who necessarily called her drug kingpin husband on his sh*t, while helping him launder his money and run his empire. I still don’t get why people disliked Skyler and I think a lot of the criticism was due to sexism and the fact that Anna is a very convincing actress. Anyway Anna, 48, is promoting her new movie, Equity, a financial thriller where she plays an investment banker. It costars Alysia Reiner of Orange is The New Black as a white collar crime prosecutor and it’s nice to see a film featuring two female executive as leads. You can watch the trailer here, it looks excellent and has an 80% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

On The Late Show, Anna and Stephen bonded over the fact that they were both waitstaff at the same restaurant (at different times) in Illinois as they both went to Northwestern University. They even had the same manager and Stephen did an impression of the guy! Stephen is four years older than Anna so they must have just missed each other, which is crazy. Anna also told a self deprecating story about how she fell trying to walk in heels on her movie and ended up with a foot injury that required she be shot from the ankles up for most of production. As for the Skylar hate, she didn’t understand it at first, like a lot of us, but gradually came to the realization that it was similar to the barriers a lot of women face, particularly Hillary Clinton. She made so many salient points and came across so well that I would recommend you watch the video, which is below. Here are highlights of what she said:

She fell while trying to walk fast in heels like the women at Goldman Sachs she shadowed
I’m a bit of a heel wimp and I slipped after the first week of shooting, totally landed on top of my left foot, thought it was broken (it wasn’t). I had to wear a cast, then a boot, then an air cast. So they shot me knees up for 14 days out of a 24 day shoot.

What do these women say about what it’s like to be a woman in finance?
It’s a psychological enterprise really. You have to really know the client’s needs you have to read what they want whether they need a firm strong hand [or] gentle. You have to balance that against the investor’s needs. They talked a lot about how you have to pay attention to what color you’re wearing, pay attention to how your hair is.

Wall St. has a likability problem? Do you mind playing someone who’s not likable?
I certainly got blowback for Skyler and there was that whole sort of Skyler hate as they call it on the Internet. That was a really tough thing to deal with because at first I didn’t really understand – was it the way I was playing the part? Vince Gilligan and all the writers [were] really confused. After a while I realized that it’s… that people can say whatever they want anonymously over the internet – nobody every came up and said ‘boy I hate your character she’s an awful woman.’

I wrote an op-ed for the New York Times because I’d been asked about it so much. It seemed to me that it was reflecting how we still are perceiving gender roles. They loved the anti-hero and they did not like the woman standing in his way, she was the killjoy.

There was a kind of a Hillary Trump thing there too.
It’s also that likability factor again. When you’re looking at Hillary Clinton you have to look at her policies, intellect, track record, at the fact that she’s been in public service for all these years, not whether or not you like her hairstyle or the color of her outfit. I think that’s something that women really do have to deal with. I think the fact that we speak out about it, we keep pushing at it, we keep knocking on that door then I think progress is being made.

[From Video of The Tonight Show]

I was kind of fist pumping at the end there when she said that gender bias is still happening but at least we’re recognizing it, talking about it and making progress. That’s one thing I want our country and the world to take away from a Hillary Presidency, I want to have more awareness and understanding of gender bias and how it affects women in all facets of life. I want to have a woman running the country who is evaluated on her competency and ability, but you know that’s not going to happen consistently when you consider how Hillary’s been smeared for decades and how she’s being held to different standards than Trump. Then I look at where we are with racism and systemic discrimination after eight solid years under Obama and it just makes me sad. As Anna said we’re noticing it and pushing back and there’s still a lot of resistance to get through. We’re knocking at that door but it’s still closed – for so many women, for so many minorities, for so many people who don’t have the same access to power.

Here’s Anna’s interview.

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images