The book includes Anderson’s fantasy, and the process of penning her own anonymous letter - which she did not reveal - surprised her.
“I can hear and see quite a lot without being affected, and I was really shocked that by writing it down it felt dirtier than it was in my mind,” she told Hammond and co-host Cat Deeley.
“It is amazing in these letters to hear women talking about women getting their needs met in their own time, if they ever do, because they don’t want the awkwardness and don’t want their partner judging how it is.”
She noted letters were from a variety of women such as “young girls who are yet to have sex, women in their 70s who have never been kissed, and women who have been married for 35 years and just are exhausted by the same old same old”.
Anderson has been promoting the book, which was published on September 5, in recent months. She explained that her intention behind the book was to “understand what made women tick”.
“As an actor, there is an inherent permission at the core of my job to give myself to an alternate reality, which is the very definition of fantasy. The women whom I embody, whose worlds I step into, also have inner lives, desires and fantasies, which are vital to understanding what makes them tick.”
Anderson is no stranger to dealing with sexual themes in her acting career.
Famous for her role as sex therapist Jean Milburn in the hit Netflix series Sex Education, she previously told The Standard that the experience of filming the show exposed her to sexual activities she had “never heard of before”.
Want skyrocketed to No 1 on the Sunday Times bestseller list when it was released in September, with Anderson thanking everyone who worked on the book on social media.
Want is currently available in New Zealand bookstores now, $38.99 for the paperback.
