The TV show Karen Gillan couldn’t live without: “The greatest thing that was ever on”
Karen Gillan might be best known in the mainstream for her role as Nebula in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but for many of us, she’ll always be Doctor Who’s Amy Pond.
The Scottish-born star got her start in television, landing one of her first-ever roles as a soothsayer in the classic British sci-fi show, only to be invited back two years later as Pond, the companion of Matt Smith’s Doctor. Playing the confident and slightly feisty character, Gillan received widespread acclaim, but it wasn’t until a few years later that she would really graduate from television to Hollywood fame.
With her role as Nebula in Guardians of the Galaxy and then the Jumanji franchise, Gillan has become a movie star, but she can’t forget her roots in television, especially since Doctor Who is one of the most iconic British shows of all time. Since then, the actor has returned to TV numerous times, her roles moving between the sitcom genre with Selfie and animation seeing her reprise her role as Nebula in the spin-off show What If…?.
But thinking about asking Gillan what her favourite show of all time is brings forth the concern of how anyone can pick just one show that stands out as the best when there have been so many amazing pieces of television that have emerged over the years. In this, sometimes, it can all come down to the one that you can’t help but go back to, finding comfort in endless rewatches, no matter how many times you’ve seen the episodes before.
Maybe it’s something you can never get sick of, like The Office or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, or something as addictive as Sex and the City or Gilmore Girls has you in a chokehold, but for Gillan, it’ll always be the classic 1990s show that shaped many of us.
“I grew up like a massive fan of Friends. Like, that was the greatest. It’s still the greatest thing that was ever on television,” she told AV Club. The show, of course, follows a friend group living in Manhattan as they get up to all kinds of scrapes, fall in love, and routinely meet in their local café, Central Perk.
Whether you identify as more of a Monica or a Phoebe (or maybe even a Ross…), there’s someone for everyone to relate to in Friends, which has left countless viewers wishing they were in a slightly messy and dysfunctional but ultimately loving friendship group of their own.
Created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, the show first aired in 1994, and it reflected a change in the aspirational lifestyle coveted by 20-somethings. With so many shows focused on families, here was a group of grown adults who treated each other like family (granted Ross and Monica are actually siblings), relying on each other as their closest associates, sharing everything and living alongside each other through relationships, breakups, pregnancies and marriages.
While romance played a big part in the show, this wasn’t a programme strictly about finding love; it was like lots of little hangout movies made for the small screen, where everything from finding a job to raising a child sat alongside disastrous musical endeavours and trying to move a sofa. Naturally,, the fan that she is, Gillan couldn’t believe it when she got the chance to film Selfie right near where Friends was shot, making for almost a full-circle moment, in a way, about which she gushed, “To be filming an American sitcom across the road from the stage where they filmed Friends was like a sort of trippy moment in my life.”
