The X-Files: Mulder and wiser
FIFTEEN years after finding fame playing FBI agent Fox Mulder in TV hit The X-Files, David Duchovny is returning to the role that made him a household name.
Duchovny, who walked away from the series in 2002 after playing the iconic investigator of the paranormal for nine years, says he was surprised how challenging it was returning to the career-making role.
“I thought I would fall back into Mulder very naturally, but at first playing the character felt a little odd,” he says.
“I didn’t want to make any drastic changes in the way I played Mulder because the character is so well-known, but of course I’m older now, and so is Mulder, so some things had to change.
“I think it would have been depressing if I had to try to play him the same way I did 15 years ago when I started.
“Thank goodness we weren’t trying to do that – we were acknowledging that 15 years had passed since then and six years since the show ended, so what became interesting was trying to figure out how this guy had changed in the six years since we’ve seen him.”
In The X-Files: I Want To Believe, Mulder is a recluse after becoming disillusioned with the FBI but is drawn back to the agency to help with a case, where a supposedly psychic paedophile priest (played by Billy Connolly) is assisting a taskforce as they hunt for a missing female agent.
The movie, which comes a decade after the series’ first big-screen spin-off, reunites Duchovny with X-Files creator Chris Carter and co-star Gillian Anderson, who played FBI physician Dana Scully.
Some questions are finally answered about the characters’ complicated and possibly romantic relationship, which kept fans guessing for the duration of the series.
But those hoping to see Mulder and Scully in a passionate clinch shouldn’t get their hopes up, Duchovny says with a smile.
“I think the relationship has been pushed so much further in this movie that I think we had to hold something back,” he says.
“If we do another one perhaps. But it’s almost like watching a brotherand a sister in a way. Maybe next time. I always felt that The X-Files as a movie franchise had real life in it.”
The tall, lanky actor hardly looks tobe a man approaching the mid-century mark (he turns 48 on August 7), withonly a slight sprinkling of silver in the stubble on his chiselled face revealing his advancing years.
Despite trading in The X-Files for a quieter life away from the spotlight and a break from the long hours on the set of the sci-fihit, Duchovny, who has two children with actress Tea Leoni, says he had no trepidation about signing on to star in another series.
“No, because it’s not like a network show where you work 10 months out of the year and shoot 25 episodes,” he says. “I work 12 weeks out of the year and shoot 12 of them so it’s actually like signing on to do one movie for the next four years or so.
“I find it harder to leave my family. That’s like what’s in this movie – which is about a guy making a decision between work and love in a way, and when you bring kids into it, it’s even more complicated.”
Is he prepared for the renewed interest from X-Files fans, whose fervour he affably describes as “nuts”?
“I’m very famous but that’s been a fact for a very long time,” he says earnestly.
“People know me and I don’t know them. I recognise that it’s an odd situation to think that you know somebody.
“I mean it happens to me when I see somebody famous – like, ‘Hey, Mel Gibson’. But you get used to it.”
Source: The Daily Telegraph
