“The truth is out there.” “I want to believe.” Both phrases were uttered by David Duchovny’s Mulder during The X-Files’ original nine year run, and are now being repeated by fans desperate to reunite with their favorite conspiracy hunters. Now that The X-Files is being resurrected on FOX, fans are chomping at the bit to dive back into the complicated mythology and even more complicated relationship between Mulder and Scully.
Back during New York Comic Con, the creator and cast of The X-Files were on hand for a special screening of the new season’s premiere episode. They talked about updating the show with new conspiracy theories and a new dynamic for Mulder and Scully. What does The X-Files look like now in 2016?
BuddyTV sat down with other reporters to get the scoop straight from series star David Duchovny about how Mulder has changed, how the project came together, and how showrunner Chris Carter has flipped the traditional X-Files mythology in new and interesting ways. Watch the full interview below:
Interview Highlights:
- How did the project come together? The three of them had always discussed doing more X-Files but Duchovny had never considered television because he had always thought of it as 22 episodes and he didn’t want to do that again. He assumed it was dead, but the limited series becoming more popular made it possible.
- “Who knows what the right amount of time is, but I see the kind of storytelling you can do over multiple hours. There’s a happy medium, but 25 episodes is too many.”
- Talking about how the show has been impacted by modern events, Duchovny talks about how he can’t let outside influences like that get in. He finds it easier to work in a “cone of silence.” “I think our job is to make the show.”
- Has Duchovny worked out a backstory for Mulder since we’ve last seen him? Not really, but he thinks you can fill in the blanks from where we meet him in the first episode.
- “You see that his marriage has not worked out, you see that he’s living alone in some house in the middle of nowhere, you see that he’s not shaven, you see that he’s not going to work.”
- He says that the amount of time he and Gillian Anderson have worked together allowed them to create a working relationship that is really intuitive. They intuitively knew how to make scenes that were dry or exposition also relationship scenes.
- “I don’t want to see Mulder and Scully on the couch, but if we do our job well there’s an aura of if the relationship is working or not working even when we’re talking about aliens.”
- Duchovny says that as an actor the danger was wanting to come out of the gate and play Mulder as an entirely different guy. But Mulder is the same character, only older and with more life experience. “He’s the same guy.”
- He talks about how Chris Carter took everything X-Files fans thought they knew and turned it slightly with the mythology of the new season.
- Duchovny talks about Joel McHale, who plays a big role in the first episode. He thinks that McHale did a great job with a character that could have been very broad.
- Did he want to come back to resolve the story? “Resolution is an illusion. Closure doesn’t exist.”
- He was happy to see the fans being excited to see the show, but they didn’t just want to trade on fan excitement. They wanted to bring something new to the table.
Are you excited for the new season? What do you most want to see? Sound off in the comments!
The X-Files premieres January 24th at 8pm EST on FOX.
(Photo courtesy of Sarah Boyce, video courtesy of Morgan Glennon)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
