{"id":1144115,"date":"2026-08-12T09:32:25","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T09:32:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1144115\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T09:32:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T09:32:25","slug":"the-salt-path-star-gillian-anderson-addresses-book-controversy-for-first-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1144115\/","title":{"rendered":"The Salt Path star Gillian Anderson addresses book controversy for first time"},"content":{"rendered":"

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One month after The Salt Path<\/a> was released in cinemas, an expos\u00e9 claimed that author Raynor Winn<\/a> had lied about many aspects of her alleged life story. Now, the film is about to be released in the US \u2013 and its lead stars are addressing the scandal for the first time. <\/p>\n

Gillian Anderson<\/a> and Jason Isaacs<\/a> previously remained silent on the controversy, but are now, bizarrely, expected to do press interviews about the project overseas.<\/p>\n

In a new interview while promoting Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, former X-Files star Anderson said she\u2019d been surprised by The Salt Path\u2019s initial box office success when The Observer\u2019s investigation broke, calling it \u201cunfortunate\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"GillianGillian Anderson says \u2018Salt Path\u2019 scandal \u2018sucks\u2019 (Getty)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe film was doing really well in the UK, beyond my expectations,\u201d she told Radio Times,<\/a> adding: \u201cIt sucked, and continues to suck.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Harry Potter and White Lotus actor Isaacs appeared on Kermode on Film podcast, when host Mark Kermode asked him: \u201cYou made The Salt Path, which is only now coming out in America?\u201d<\/p>\n

The actor replied: “It’s going to be interesting doing publicity for The Salt Path now that there’s been… I said, \u2018Are you sure you want us to do publicity?\u2019 They went, \u2018Absolutely.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Isaacs said he was fine with the decision as he thinks \u201cit\u2019s a beautiful film\u201d and \u201cthat much of it is still completely valid\u201d, but levelled: “Obviously, some of the things have been questioned. It’s going to be an interesting experience.”<\/p>\n

\"GillianGillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs in \u2018The Salt Path\u2019 (Rialto)<\/p>\n

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\u2019s rare, terminal neurological disease (corticobasal degeneration or CBD). <\/p>\n

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 \u00a3100,000 from a family member, and owned land in France where she and her husband could have lived.<\/p>\n

Winn has strongly denied the allegations against her, stating they are \u201chighly misleading\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\u2018Salt\u2018Salt Path\u2019 author Raynor Winn was accused of lying about details from her book (Getty)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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,\u201d she said in response. \u201cThis is the true story of our journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also called the investigation \u201cgrotesquely unfair\u201d and shared photographs of redacted clinic letters, addressed to her husband, that appear to show that he was \u201ctreated for CBD\/S [corticobasal syndrome] and has been for many years\u201d.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s being distributed by Rialto, whose CEO, Kelly Rogers, described the project as \u201ca film of quiet power\u201d and said that it \u201cspeaks to something deeply human\u201d, according to Variety.<\/p>\n

The film was a box office hit in the UK, where it earned \u00a37.6m, making it one of 2025\u2019s most successful British indie movies.<\/p>\n

When the Salt Path scandal broke last summer, the book\u2019s publisher, Penguin, said that it \u201cundertook all the necessary due diligence\u201d before releasing the book in 2018, and said that it had \u201cnot received any concerns about the book\u2019s content\u201d before the investigation was released.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cconsiderable distress\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1144116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[9],"tags":[16743,157021,162349,557,4080,267487,47671,311061,77,44154,137736,21318,253496,44888,17742,457,2249,254180,107047,78876,16,15,659],"class_list":["post-1144115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-arrival","tag-arts-culture-and-entertainment","tag-attending","tag-california","tag-celebrities","tag-city-of-los-angeles","tag-color-image","tag-dga-theater-complex","tag-entertainment","tag-film-industry","tag-film-premiere","tag-gillian-anderson","tag-headshot","tag-horizontal","tag-one-person","tag-people","tag-photography","tag-premiere-event","tag-red-carpet-event","tag-teenage-sex-and-death-at-camp-miasma","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1144115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1144115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1144115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1144116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1144115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1144115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1144115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}