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One month after The Salt Path was released in cinemas, an exposé claimed that author Raynor Winn had lied about many aspects of her alleged life story. Now, the film is about to be released in the US – and its lead stars are addressing the scandal for the first time.
Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs previously remained silent on the controversy, but are now, bizarrely, expected to do press interviews about the project overseas.
In a new interview while promoting Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, former X-Files star Anderson said she’d been surprised by The Salt Path’s initial box office success when The Observer’s investigation broke, calling it “unfortunate”.
Gillian Anderson says ‘Salt Path’ scandal ‘sucks’ (Getty)
“The film was doing really well in the UK, beyond my expectations,” she told Radio Times, adding: “It sucked, and continues to suck.”
She continued: “A lot of people were enjoying it, regardless, and it is special in its own right. I hope people are able to experience it as its own entity, separate from what may or may not be true or whatever controversy there is.”
Meanwhile, Harry Potter and White Lotus actor Isaacs appeared on Kermode on Film podcast, when host Mark Kermode asked him: “You made The Salt Path, which is only now coming out in America?”
The actor replied: “It’s going to be interesting doing publicity for The Salt Path now that there’s been… I said, ‘Are you sure you want us to do publicity?’ They went, ‘Absolutely.’”
Isaacs said he was fine with the decision as he thinks “it’s a beautiful film” and “that much of it is still completely valid”, but levelled: “Obviously, some of the things have been questioned. It’s going to be an interesting experience.”
Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs in ‘The Salt Path’ (Rialto)
The Salt Path, which was published in 2018 and has sold over two million copies worldwide, details how Raynor Winn and her husband Moth lost their house after a friend invested their money poorly. It charts their fall into homelessness and the long walk that miraculously eased symptoms of Moth’s rare, terminal neurological disease (corticobasal degeneration or CBD).
However, the Observer investigation put this whole narrative into question. It was alleged that Winn had stolen large amounts of money from her place of work, gone into hiding, lost the house after borrowing around £100,000 from a family member, and owned land in France where she and her husband could have lived.
Winn has strongly denied the allegations against her, stating they are “highly misleading”.
‘Salt Path’ author Raynor Winn was accused of lying about details from her book (Getty)
“The Salt Path lays bare the physical and spiritual journey Moth and I shared, an experience that transformed us completely and altered the course of our lives,” she said in response. “This is the true story of our journey.”
She also called the investigation “grotesquely unfair” and shared photographs of redacted clinic letters, addressed to her husband, that appear to show that he was “treated for CBD/S [corticobasal syndrome] and has been for many years”.
The film was originally set to be released in the US and Canada on 22 May, but has been pushed back to 4 September. It’s being distributed by Rialto, whose CEO, Kelly Rogers, described the project as “a film of quiet power” and said that it “speaks to something deeply human”, according to Variety.
The film was a box office hit in the UK, where it earned £7.6m, making it one of 2025’s most successful British indie movies.
When the Salt Path scandal broke last summer, the book’s publisher, Penguin, said that it “undertook all the necessary due diligence” before releasing the book in 2018, and said that it had “not received any concerns about the book’s content” before the investigation was released.
Winn had been due to release another book, her fourth non-fiction title, On Winter Hill, in October 2025, but its publication has since been delayed to January 2028 after the author suffered “considerable distress”.