Hi there! And welcome back in the fandom 🙂

This is quite an ask you sent me here! First of all, I don’t think anyone in here “hate” Gillian. It’s a strong word, and in my opinion, it doesn’t fit the Gillovny fandom’s feeling for Gillian at all. I think ‘disappointment’ works better. 

I’m kinda over it now, xfiles start filming again, I want to focus on that, but because you asked nicely and you came off anon, I’ll still try to sum it up for you 🙂

Last November, she was rumored to start dating Peter Morgan, the writer of The Crown. We, the Gillovny fandom, laughed it off. Two months before, she did a comic con wearing a t-shirt saying “I’m with Schmoopie” with an arrow pointing at David and it appeared that they’ve been spending the summer together in California. There was no way she would be dating someone else, we thought. She attended The Crown premiere with Andrew O’Hagan as her date, so there really was nothing to worry about. But in January, they showed up at the Golden Globes together. There was no particular sign of affection, but she was at The Crown’s table. I’ll let you Google the pictures, you will see how *not* in love they look. It was weird. Then there was Viceroy’s House premiere, where she only stayed a few minutes only to run to an event in his honor, and then The Baftas where he was nominated. No need to say that those were tough months for the Gillovny fandom. But then The Webby Awards happened, and Gillian and David were back to their old-seives again, and it was great. It was in May. At this time, there were still people believing she wasn’t dating Peter Morgan. All of that happened in 7 months. 7 months where she could have made it clear who she was with, just walking a red carpet hand in hand and it would have been it. But she chose another way. They went on vacation in Italy and for the first time in her whole career, 450 pictures of her and Peter Morgan were released. A few of them were kinda… graphic… half nudes. That’s the way our Gillovny hopes were crushed.

You will tell me that it’s none of our business who Gillian is dating, and you’re right. It’s not about who she’s dating but about who she is, and for a time, we weren’t sure and probably still aren’t, that the Gillian we all love and admire was the real Gillian. Never we would have thought she would end up half naked with her boyfriend pulling her panties down in the trashy press all around the world, but it happened. Gillian, who is used to vacation in secluded places where nobody can see her went on vacation with her new boyfriend in a celebrity hotspot and was followed for a whole day, maybe two, by paparazzis she definitely saw. 

You may have noticed that all the events I listed up there where she attended with him are His events. That’s because in almost one year, we’ve never seen him attending her event. Maybe once, at the Bazaar Magazine women of the year award where she was rewarded, but even there, this magazine was in a marketing partnership with his show.  He also showed up at one of her panel for her “We” book in London, but the signing took too long, so he left before her. During those events, we have seen him screaming at her and pulling her hand to rush her, not helping her for one second when she was on crutches, looking annoyed as hell next to her, and not waiting for her while she was signing autographs. In the pictures, we’ve seen him pulling her panties down on a public place, removing his underwear at this same place, and also letting her pay for her own ice-cream. All of that happened during the promotion of Gillian’s book “We, a manifesto for women everywhere” and we got the feeling that she was preaching something she was not applying to herself. 

I think the fact that Gillian and David are not together would have been easier to handle if the dude had been a caring gem, which he really isn’t. There’s also a part of the Gillovny fandom who now believe Gillian and David were never together and Gillian (a lot more than David), used Gillovny only for promotional purpose and everything we saw or thought we saw was a lie. I personally don’t believe that, but that’s also where the disappointment come from. 

So there’s no hate here. I mean, there could have been hate, when those pictures appeared, because it was seriously shocking and we were reacting with our guts and we may have been harsh on her for sure. But it’s over now, we’re all trying to cope with these new developments and keeping our sanity and decency. We all wish Gillian would have handled all this differently, she had several occasions to do so, but she chose not to. She basically told us once to fuck off with one tweet, and now she has this Tumblr icon which appeared around the time of the Italy pictures so I assume the disappointment is mutual. As for my perspective, I’m proud not praise everything my idols do or say. If they do something I don’t like, I’m not going to pretend I do hoping they care about my opinion, I admit the people I love and admire have flaws, they make mistakes, their judgement isn’t unerring and they’re just humans, not Gods. But as I said, I’m over it, the disappointment is still here in me, but I don’t hate her, I do love her for many reasons, and I accept that there are parts of her personality that I don’t know even though I thought I did, and that there are parts of her that I dislike, just like in everyone else.