Gillian Anderson says she had to learn to love playing Scully
January 17, 2016  •  Leave a Reply

Nearly 14 years after the original series concluded, The X-Files is making its highly anticipated return to TV screens next week.
And ahead of the six-episode reboot, Gillian Anderson, 47 and David Duchovny, 55, sat down during the Fox TCA Panel this week to talk about the iconic show and the impact it had on their lives.

The duo opened up about how they took a while to appreciate their characters that made them sci-fi sex symbols more than 20 years ago.
‘It took me a long time to embrace it after we were done with the series,’ Anderson said Friday as she sat alongside series creator Chris Carter and actor Joel McHale.
‘It took a good decade for me to start thinking of it as the gift that it was and appreciate the opportunity I had and how fortunate I was to play a great, iconic character in a show that was iconic in itself,’ said Anderson.

Duchovny, who played FBI agent Fox Mulder to Anderson’s agent Scully in the 1993-2002 drama, said that perspective was key to revisiting it. The X-Files debuts January 24 on Fox, with Joel McHale a new addition.
‘It took awhile to recognize it as the gift that it is, and that’s why we’re able to come back now,’ Duchovny said.
‘It acted as a spur to me to go out and actually do more work, to keep expanding myself as an artist. … It was both a gift and a spur to not settle after it was done.’

Both followed the X-Files and its two follow-up movies with very different work. Duchovny starred in Showtime’s ‘Californication’ and branched into writing books and music. Anderson appeared in a variety of stage and screen projects that included classics Bleak House and Great Expectations, both for TV.
The actors were asked to discuss the on-screen chemistry they shared in The X-Files as their characters waded through government plots and crimes with bizarre twists.
‘There is something extra, and I don’t know what that is. It seems like it’s separate from us,’ Anderson said.
‘You can feel it right now,’ Duchovny said, drawing laughs. ‘But I think at this point, having known each other and worked together so much for the last, over 20 years, we’ve gone beyond chemistry to history, which is a really cool thing to play as well.’
‘We have chemistry and history, and we’re going try to get biology,’ he added with a smile.
A recurring topic was that while 2016 is a very different world than the 1990s heyday of the original series, the new show is simply an amped up version.
‘I think it’s reflected in the show,’ Carter said. ‘There’s over 500 conspiracy sites on the Internet, nothing is underground anymore, everything is out in the open.’
He explained later: ‘we’re living in a time now when there’s a tremendous amount of distrust for the government, even the media. This is a really good time [for X-Files to return]’.
Carter said the limited run will include ‘mythology’ episodes, such as those in the original series that focused on Mulder’s effort to prove a government cover-up about aliens on Earth. There’s also a comedic-slash-horror episode, which also harkens back to the original X-Files formula.
The Lone Gunmen conspiracy-theory trio also will be back, although they did ‘meet their maker’ in a previous season, Carter said, explaining that ‘they’re actually back in a fantasy.’

‘Scully’s fantasy,’ Anderson said, smiling.
Whether more ‘X-Files’ episodes are ahead remains to be seen.
‘I’m waiting for Fox to come back and say we want more of these,’ Carter said.

Source


Interviews, Television, The X-Files