We might know the plot of the new movie X-Files: I Want to Believe, but if we told you we’d have to kill you. Instead, we’ll leave the explaining to the pros…aka David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson who starred in the hit sci-fi television show as FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully for nine seasons. Find out what they had to say about taking their characters to the big screen for the new thriller opening July 25, 2008.
Hollywood.com: What is the secret to your onscreen chemistry?
Gillian Anderson: We’ve actually been having a 15 year affair [laughs].
David Duchovny: [Playfully points at Gillian’s baby bump]. I don’t know why in the beginning, maybe just luck in the beginning. But after this long we actually do have a history and so when I look over at Gillian or I’m Mulder looking over at Scully, there’s a lot of shit that I can call on. We have a lot between us and so you don’t really have to make it up. I think that just as people, now 15 years later, we have just shared so much regardless of how much we speak to one another. I expect to see Gillian even if I haven’t seen her for a year.
GA: Whatever it is that’s between us was there from the second that we started working together and it’s not quantifiable. I think it’s something that is unique and yes, they got lucky, but it was something that Chris [Carter] had seen which is why he fought so hard, specifically, and this is something that’s been written about a lot, to cast me over someone else. He saw something between the two of us that was unique.
DD: I mean, there’s chemistry in life and there’s acting chemistry. I’m not saying they’re the same thing, but they’re as mysterious.
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HW: Can you talk about getting back into these characters after a six year period?
DD: The first two weeks I felt a little awkward and I didn’t really feel like I wanted to do longer scenes. I was just fine running around. Then as soon as Gillian and I started working and it was Mulder and Scully, then I kind of remembered what it was all about and that relationship kind of anchored my performance just as I think the relationship anchors this film.
GA: I think I must’ve gone through 10 other characters in the process of trying to get to her when I had assumed that I would be able to show up on the first day and it would just be there. It wasn’t until I think day three when we got to work together, not just necessarily in a familiar environment which it really wasn’t, but in the environment of each other and the relationship and that it kind of felt natural and familiar and I felt like I’d landed this time.
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HW: In terms of having your own children, does that make you more of a skeptic or a believer of miracles or in absolutes?
GA: That’s interesting. I never related the two – probably absolutes on my end.
DD: It’s miraculous. It’s spiritual. It’s otherworldly to have kids. It’s more Mulder, I think, but I don’t know.
GA: But then also when you have kids, when your kids get sick or when family members do, not just your kids, but when there’s death there’s also absolutes and that can hit home at any stage of one’s life.
DD: See, we’re starting to argue [laughs].
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HW: The film was very heartfelt and thought provoking, similar to some of the early episodes. Did that play a part in coming back to this after all this time?
DD: No. My coming back was not based on script. At this point I have almost complete blind trust in Chris [Carter] and Frank [Spotnitz] to come up with the goods. So my only concern was that it should be a stand alone and not something that you needed specific knowledge of ‘The X-Files’ to enjoy
GA: I had stated my interest in being onboard sometime ago as well and by the time I read the script it was kind of a given that this was something that we were going to do. So I don’t think there was ever a point where I jumped more onboard or had an opportunity to back out of it…
DD: She wanted a musical.
GA: We’re not allowed to sing.
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HW: When you play characters this deep for so long and then it stops, how much of that stays with you for life?
DD: I wouldn’t say that I ever get up and think of Mulder unless I’m working on it. I think that I liked a lot about the guy. When I played him I liked his courage and I liked his energy to get to the truth and to the quest and all of that and I think that at one point I’d learned a little from that, like a fan might. I was a fan of the guy. So that’s as far as I go in terms of saying that he lives in me.
GA: It’s the same for me. I don’t do things, mannerisms or something and think, ‘Oh, that was kind of like Scully.’ But by the same token I don’t know how much of me today wasn’t influenced by the fact that I got to play her for such a long time. It’s possible that there are aspects of my seriousness or my independence or my inquisitiveness about the medical profession or science or something that aren’t directly related to the fact that I lived with her for such a long time. But that’s hard to qualify and hard to say.
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HW: Gillian, Scully was always on her cell phone. What is your relationship with your cell phone and how do you think Scully influenced women in this country?
GA: I think I only ever talked to Mulder on that cell phone. I don’t think that there were any conversations that we ever had with anyone else except for Mulder, if you remember.
DD: You were in my fav five.
GA: Was I number one or number two? [Duchovny holds up one finger]. Remember how big our cell phones were? We just happened to have them in our pockets.
DD: Yeah. You had to have like a trench coat to have them in the pocket…’Hello? I’m talking to you on a phone that’s not attached to anything.’
GA: I’ve had letters from people, even actually recently, who have said, ‘Funnily enough I’ve been a fan for many years and it’s because of Scully that I’m now a forensic pathologist –’ or ‘I’m now a medical doctor –’ or ‘I’m now in the FBI –’ or any of the 15 things that she was as a professional to be able to say all those complicated words.
DD: You were talented. The cell phone question is interesting because I think that it extended the life of the series because Gillian and I were so fatigued and the advent of the cell phone, in what year? ’96? I don’t know. But it was instrumental in us being able to have time off because we could split up and we didn’t have to be in the same room to have a conversation. I’m being totally serious. I could have some time off and Gillian could have some time off and we’d just talk on the phone to one another rather than being in every scene together.
GA: It’s very true.
DD: So if not for the cell phone no second half of The X-Files.
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HW: David, you famously distanced yourself from the show in the last season, being fatigued, and now it turns out you were the one who really pushed for the film. Is it a love/hate relationship?
DD: The love/hate had to do with me wanting to get on with the rest of my life, the rest of my career and when you think about it, that I did eight years and Gillian did nine, that’s a lifetime. There are no other dramas that keep the same characters that run that long. If you look at Law & Order or ER, they’re 20 years old or whatever they are, but they’re completely recast. So it’s just not something you see. You don’t see actors not get fatigued and not get frustrated in a drama where we’re working, cell phones or not, everyday for many, many hours playing the same characters. So it’s just natural to burnout. There was always love for the show and love for the character. There was never any hate for that.
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HW: How difficult was it to shoot the film in Whistler, Canada in such snowy weather?
GA: This time around I didn’t have as much exposure to it as David did. Fortunately, Chris didn’t write those words in the script for Scully. But I was up there in Whistler and when I arrived it was about 18 below. Fortunately it didn’t stay there for too long, but I was out there for probably a good couple of weeks, I guess and it’s beautiful, but it’s also exhausting.
DD: Yeah. Let me try to say this in a way that’s right. Just doing quotation marks is going to get me in trouble. I had to work in one of the most beautiful ski resorts in the world for almost three weeks. Pity me. I think it’s hard sometimes. The logistics of it is if you’re out in the middle of nowhere and you’re running around in the freezing rain or snow you don’t get a chance to go off and warm up in your trailer because you’re seeing so much that your trailer is on the other side of the town. So you are stuck in clothes that aren’t fitting for the environment for a long time. So, yeah, it’s a pain in the ass, but you just suck it up and it’s not going to be that long and your feet are cold and your ass is cold and your hands are cold and your muscles are cold. You just suck it up.
GA: I think one of the more physically challenging aspects for me at the time were that there were a couple of scenes where we had quite a bit of dialogue and when you’re in that kind of weather and the wind is slightly blowing and the snow is coming down, your lips actually do freeze. They do. There were a couple of times that were reminiscent of the pilot. There was a scene in the pilot where we’re in this pouring forest rain that’s freezing and I’m screeching at him about one thing or another…what was reminiscent was the fact that my mouth wouldn’t work. I had all this stuff to say and it just comes out as gobbledygook.
