Last week the star-struck fandom discussed to death Gillian Anderson appearing in David Duchovny’s podcast. Although we hardly learned anything new on #TheXFiles themselves, it was a perhaps unprecedented insight into the actors’ personalities, a bit like listening in on an old couple’s therapy session.
As I was listening to their conversation, the following exchange came to me, from “Small Potatoes”:
Mulder: “We never really, uh, *talk* much, do we?”
Scully: “What do you mean like, really talk? No. No, we don’t.”
This could really be the actors talking. For all their on-screen chemistry and their off-screen banter in public appearances, they don’t seem to really know each other much, or be much on the same wavelength. They have the sort of familiarity you have with a childhood friend but with whom you have grown apart over the years and you now only see once every few years, and your being comfortable with each other just comes from the fact of having spent so much time in the presence of the other in the past.
Their conversation plays exactly how they describe themselves to be: DD deals with his issues by talking about them and holds remorse about things in the past, while GA deals with her issues by not talking about them and filling her life with new work and experiences, living in the moment. As such, DD mentions, very candidly, several experiences of shame and regret in his life, including how he acted like a presumptuous movie star on the set of the show — while GA doesn’t remember much in terms of specifics or is more reserved and would rather talk about issues that are close to her heart today.
That’s what I got from it. I enjoyed it, but I’m not much of a person who follows actors closely.
I got zero hint of them trying to spur up excitement for a continuation of the series, and that’s fine by me.
Other than that, some TXF-related stuff:
- As is well established, DD & GA were not particularly getting well along on set, and sometimes spent weeks without talking to each other.
- This got to the point where Carter advised them to go to couple therapy but as their characters (in season 1!).
- Being in their 20s-30s and have the show become such a success while at the same time dealing with their personal lives (pregnancy, divorce) was huge, huge stress.
- DD wanted Mulder to be more action-hero-like, as Mulder was not traditionally masculine (losing his gun or fist fights).
- DD remembers strong shame in being rejected by Vancouverites when he forced the move to Los Angeles.
- As DD left the show in season 7, GA left the show in season 11 — and DD now felt that he should have apologized for leaving originally, because her leaving now hurt him.
- GA approached the revival as a one-time special event, not a return for an on-going series.
- GA specifically mentions the ending of season 11 as problematic for her, “particularly for Scully”: “it felt like Scully’s trajectory was no longer one of strength and agency it felt like it was beholden to an old idea of of what a woman is, and that’s [William/pregnancy] all she could talk about”; DD didn’t react to that ending in the same way.
Podcast and transcript here:
https://lemonadamedia.com/podcast/catching-up-with-gillian-anderson/
