The Redhead Problem

There was a period, maybe four or five years, when copper hair was essentially a guarantee I’d fall apart. Hattie Watson, Filippa Smeds, Cintia Dicker—I was gone every time, instantly and completely. Karen Gillan arrived in that same window and landed harder than most, because she wasn’t just beautiful on a screen, she was chaotic and funny and entirely her own thing as Amy Pond in Doctor Who.

Amy Pond is the kind of companion who makes the show feel like it belongs to her. Willful, teasing, impossible to dismiss—she runs circles around everyone and knows it. I watched several seasons I had no real business watching almost entirely because of her, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

Gillan already had Guardians of the Galaxy, Not Another Happy Ending, and New Town Killers to her name before the Marvel machine turned her into a household name—a real working actor, not just a face from television. At 26 she did a shoot for American Esquire, briefly back in the modeling world she’d moved on from. She also told a joke about a woman in a bar. I’ve read it twice. I still don’t understand it. I assume it’s funny.