The truth is out there — at least when it comes to David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson’s once-contentious relationship.
The former co-stars — who shot to fame in the 1990s by playing FBI agents Fox Mulder (Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Anderson) on the sci-fi hit “The X-Files” — recently reunited on Duchovny’s podcast, “Fail Better,” and Duchovny didn’t waste any time discussing the messier aspects of their dynamic.
“There was a long time, working on the show, where we were just not even dealing with one another off camera,” Duchovny recalled about six minutes into the episode, published Tuesday. “And there was a lot of tension ― which didn’t matter, apparently, for the work, cause we’re both fucking crazy, I guess. We could just go out there and do what we needed to do.”
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“That is kind of crazy,” Anderson agreed. “I mean, it’s crazy that we were able to present on camera, you know, the various feelings and emotions and attraction and all that kind of stuff, but then not speak to each other for weeks at a time.”
Although the two actors are friends now, the pair openly disliked one another during the initial run of “The X-Files” from 1993 to 2002. As noted by The Independent, Duchovny told Metro in 2008 that he and Anderson “couldn’t stand the sight of each other.” Anderson told The Guardian in 2015 that their relationship was “intense,” acknowledging that both parties were “pains in the arse” and “there were definitely periods when we hated each other.”
Perhaps with this in mind, it only took Duchovny 11 minutes into Tuesday’s podcast to tell Anderson that he had a specific memory “of the most dysfunctional we ever were,” and ask if she could guess which incident he was thinking of.
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“Tell me,” Anderson replied, seemingly having no idea what Duchovny was referencing.
The “Californication” star said the incident occurred the day after “some Emmys [ceremony],” and that he’d offered to give Anderson a lift to Vancouver on a private jet.
“And you were late, and I was so angry,” Duchovny recalled. “And then we sat on this private plane flying to Vancouver from L.A., not talking, and you wrote me a letter. So, you’re just like, six feet away from me, writing a letter to me... and it’s a beautiful letter. I don’t remember it exactly, but it was appreciative, and it was all the things that I wanted to hear. But it’s just amazing that we couldn’t just have [a conversation]. You know, the fact that it’s a private plane, it’s just all ridiculous.”
“I had no memory that we were even on a private plane together, let alone that I wrote you a letter on one,” the “Sex Education” star admitted.
But Duchovny wasn’t done. He recalled another moment during the filming of Season 1 when the two were butting heads so hard that the show’s creator, Chris Carter, pulled them into his office for a weird proposition.
“Chris was like, ‘Do you guys want to go, like, into therapy?’” Duchovny remembered. “And I was like, ‘You mean, as Mulder and Scully? I’m confused.’”
Anderson said she didn’t recall this instance either, and struggled to name a specific moment in which the two of them were terrible to one another.
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“I’m trying to think of any,” she said. “I just remember ― I mean, our hours.”
Duchovny recalled that due to the show’s schedule, the two were both suffering from “sleep deprivation,” which he acknowledged must have been difficult for Anderson because she was pregnant early on in the show’s run. “You get pregnant, you’re on a show that blows up. Your dreams are coming true, in a way, but it’s also a nightmare now, and —”
“Getting a divorce,” Anderson interjected, reminding him that her divorce from her first husband, Clyde Klotz — whom she met on the set of “X-Files” — happened in 1997.
“I do remember times when I just bawled my eyes out,” she continued. “It’s hard under those circumstances. I think it required us to be, you know, über-adults very quickly, and I have to imagine that under those extreme circumstances, that the only thing that, at times, that’s going to want to come out is actually our ‘child,’ and not our ‘adult’ at all.”
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