Hello all Duchovy fans! I am taking a break from the site this summer and would like to direct you to The Official Californication Website, DavidandGillian.net and XFilesMedia.com for all the latest news about Mr. Duchovny.

Happy summer!
~GERTIE

BTW, Californication returns in early 2011. Here is a sneak preview:

From The Sunday Times: The X Files star’s new movie The Joneses sees him as a man who has it all. Real-life however, is not so straightforward

David Duchovny, Hollywood star, husband and father of two, is in the throes of a new relationship — and, to tell the truth, which he usually does, it has left him with mixed feelings. On the one hand, his new setup makes perfect sense, especially given his occasionally nomadic lifestyle. And, of course, we all have to move on and can’t live in the past. But he is something of a traditionalist and doesn’t enjoy leaving loved ones behind. Yes, like many, Duchovny is facing up to one of mankind’s great questions: just how do we feel about the Kindle?

“I travel quite a bit, and being able to throw this little thing in my backpack so I can take my entire library with me is unbeliev able,” reflects the 49-year-old actor, pondering his handheld vehicle for digital books. And yet paper is a good technology, I suggest. “I know,” he sighs, “I don’t like the idea of reading a book on a screen. But I tend to be a reference reader, flicking back and forth, so it really is useful.”

For all the success of the now-iconic The X Files, the more recent Californication and a clutch of films, Duchovny maintains a sincerely deep level of interest in literature, kindled during his youth. He began his doctorate in comparative literature at Yale in the early 1980s (one of his tutors was the eminent critic Harold Bloom), but his thesis — on magic and technology in contemporary American fiction — remains uncompleted. “My career started, so I couldn’t afford the time to finish it, but I do retain an academic interest in literature.”

There are few actors in Hollywood who profess an academic interest in anything, never mind literature, but Duchovny is cut from a distinctive cloth. Many actors display a ready wit and intelligence, but few have his candour, or the likeable nonchalance that imbues so many of his performances and makes his characters men you’d genuinely like to hang out with. He seems pitched somewhere between his two television characters — more relaxed than The X Files’ Mulder, more together than Californication’s troubled novelist, Hank Moody. He likes to shoot the breeze — he can’t cook, for example, although he does make a good sandwich. “And breakfast,” he adds with a pause. “Sandwiches can also be good for breakfast.”

In his professional life, after striking it big with the first of his two famous series, he eschewed big-budget bluster, concentrating primarily on independent film. His latest movie is one that few other actors could carry. Written and directed by a first-timer, Derrick Borte, The Joneses casts Duchovny and Demi Moore as the heads of a super-stylish household, parachuted into a swanky suburban neighbourhood to charm their friends and sell their lifestyle. Selling is exactly what they are doing: the family is false, assembled by a conglomerate to beguile an unwitting and seemingly affluent clientele into wanting what the Joneses have. It’s a smart piece, if a little contrived, and Duchovny’s first-class performance sees it through. “It’s smart and funny, and I wish that I’d written it,” he smiles.

Duchovny does, in fact, write, as well as act and direct, and admits to a hankering for the highbrow world of academia. “Actually, I have an interest in finishing my PhD, but I just know I never will. It’s like if I almost became a surgeon — that doesn’t mean I am going to operate on anybody right now.”

This little aside reverberates quite loudly through Duchovny’s life and career. Just as he’d like to finish his doctorate, but won’t, he’d like to write and direct, but accepts that he might not get the chance. He would also have liked to quit television after The X Files, but, in the end, he went back. Like many of us, he seems to want what he can’t have. Unlike many of us, however, he’s making his peace with the fact.

As a writer-director, for instance, his sole directorial effort on film to date (he has tackled a few X Files and Californication episodes) has come with the comic drama House of D, about an American artist in Paris, which he also wrote, and which featured his wife, the actress Tea Leoni. “I have things in mind for writing and directing, but the scripts I write seem to fall into this independent world,” he concedes, “which I started veering towards as I was finishing The X Files, about 10 years ago.” He pauses for a moment. “And it is a hard world right now, when you want to make the kind of movies I am writing. I think they could be popular, and could do business, but it’s hard to prove that at the script stage. At some point, I think somebody is going to take a chance and give me some money to make one.” If not, he could put one out as a novel, perhaps? “It’s funny you should say that. I have been working on this script this past winter, and I think it is quite dense. I don’t know if it is a movie or not. I hope it is, but I am also going to turn it into a novel, just in case.”

As an actor, Duchovny’s identity was — at least until Hank Moody arrived to ruffle his unflappable hair — inexorably tied to his X Files character, Special Agent Mulder, who, along with Gillian Anderson’s Scully, sleuthed the otherworldly on our television screens from 1993 until 2002. They’ve also popped up twice on the big screen, successfully with 1998’s The X Files ($189m at the worldwide box office), and less successfully in 2008’s The X Files: I Want to Believe (few felt the same; it took $68m).

“I think all great successes help and hinder, but they help most of all,” he says, reflecting on whether Mulder has cast a shadow on his subsequent career. “It happens that an actor comes into public consciousness only in one form. You can’t come out in three television series in one year and show people everything you can do. But I’m happy it was The X Files and not something I thought wasn’t good.” His pride in the franchise extends to the most recent movie, although he accepts that errors were made. “It was a $25m picture and couldn’t compete with the summer movies like The Dark Knight. It was a sombre mood piece, and that might have been a mistake. I hope we get to do another. Gillian and I would both be interested in seeing where it goes.”

Quite where that is remains to be seen, but there is no escaping the fact that The X Files transformed Duchovny’s life. Indeed, for all the material success it brought him, during one of the first conversations we had, in 2005, with the series three years behind him, he expressed a firm desire to avoid further television work. He popped up on Saturday Night Live, and in an episode of Sex and the City, but these were one-offs.

In 2007, however, he reappeared, in Californication. Despite some early criticism about its racy content (some critics dubbed it The Sex Files), the show proved an enormous hit; Duchovny scooped a Golden Globe for the very first season, and nominations for the two that followed. “When I said to you back then that I had no desire to go back to television, I didn’t see how TV was changing. Now, you can do a 12-episode series and it doesn’t dominate your life. I actually think that doing a series like this is the most free form of filmed entertainment you can make.” During his nine-year stint in The X Files, he starred in more than 150 episodes. “I just wasn’t smart enough back when we were speaking to see that the TV landscape was changing.”

In that previous conversation, we had spoken about infidelity. At the time, he had been happily married for eight years to Leoni — with whom he has two children, a daughter, Madelaine West, now 11, and a son, Kyd, 7 — and we had joked about man’s inability to keep his trousers on. “They’re discovering that levels of serotonin are much lower in men, and that’s the chemical that makes you happy, and also makes you want to bond,” he mused at the time. “So men not only want to have sex with lots of different women, to propagate, or whatever that old argument is, but they also have less of the feeling of being part of something. So it’s harder for a man to bond and feel connected.”

A few years later, in the summer of 2008, he released a statement that he was “voluntarily entering a facility for the treatment of sex addiction”. The news appeared somewhat ironic, given our earlier conversation and the libidinous nature of his character in Californication. Shortly after the announcement, he and Leoni separated, although they had reconciled by the autumn of last year, and the family went on an extended holiday on the West Coast. Despite his candour, I wonder, why did he go public?

“I would be glad to tell you off the record, but it is not something I really want to discuss in public,” he replies. It’s a delicate subject, and one that was inflamed further when a British tabloid claimed a week after the split that he had had an affair with a tennis instructor, Edit Pakay, while still married. Duchovny denied the report and announced legal action. The paper printed a retraction. He now views the whole business with an admirable mellowness. “The tabloid world is busy, and omnivorous, so I was not taken aback by that story,” he says. “I don’t take any of it personally. I am not saying I enjoy it, but these things exist because people buy them, so it is not for me to say they should not print this stuff.”

His refusal to blame the press is refreshing, and he even jokingly suggests that tabloid interest at least shows people still care. “It would be nice for them to get the facts right — but it is just gossip, so it’s not of world-shattering importance. It may be hurtful for me personally, but mostly what worries me is that my children are exposed to it. Luckily, they don’t read that British newspaper. But the time will come, with the glory of Google, that they’ll find something some day. ‘Dad, what the f*** is this?’ Hopefully, I’ll be able to explain. In the meantime, I’ll get on with enjoying my family, my work, my interests.”

Which brings us back to literature, books and, of course, the Kindle. What is currently top of his hard drive? “I have gotten into David Foster Wallace, mostly as an essayist. And Richard Powers I like very much. But I tend to read with attention deficit disorder. I read 10 or 15 books at a time, always wanting to read something else.”

Which comes as no great surprise. In fact, it might even be typical Duchovny, always wanting what’s just out of reach.

From The Orlando Sentinel: I talked with David Duchovny about his new movie, The Joneses, and focused on his relationship to the film’s satiric warning about the dangers of marketing and a consumerist lifestyle for the print version of that story.

But that didn’t leave room for him talking about his zeitgeist-tackling cable series, Californication, or his future plans or what car one should drive to Be Like Dave. So that part of our talk is below.

“I am so (s%^$$&) at the zeitgeist,” Duchovny says. “I didn’t see The X-Files coming. I didn’t Californication catching on.

“I thought a couple of movies I’d done were going to be huge hits and they weren’t. I’m really bad at that. I consider myself a smart guy, and yet I have no clue if something I’m doing is going to catch on.

“I realized, at some point, that there is no repeating of that X-Files thing. It’s luck. It’s Avatar, the planets aligning. I’m not going to try and top that.

“When I got off the show, I was thinking, ‘How am I going to top it?’ Then I realized that wasn’t going to happen.I said ‘No more TV’ Fine. But cable started doing these great niche shows – Sex and the City, The Sopranos – that were giving you more creative freedom than you get on broadcast TV or the movies.

“Californication only takes me 13 weeks to film a whole season. I don’t write them. I direct one of them per season, and the rest of the time, I just act in them. It’s a fantastic schedule which allows plenty of time with family, doing a show that I haven’t gotten tired of. We have this quick spring we do. By the time we get to episode 12, we’re tired, but we’re still sprinting. ‘Wow. It’s over. I hope we get to do another season of it.’

“We’re making this show almost in a vacuum. You can’t do that in a movie any more. They have to satisfy too many quadrants. The reason you get Tara or Nurse Jackie is because talented creative people are getting to do what they do and are not being told by marketers what they should be doing.”

Duchovny’s co-starring in The Joneses, which opens Friday. It’s about the ultimate viral marketing scheme, creating a fake family to infiltrate an affluent community, show off their toys, and convince the neighbors to spend spend spend to have those toys and keep up with The Joneses. I asked the father of two (he’s reconciled with Tea Leoni after a separation of the Tiger Woods variety) how he teaches his kids to be savvy to what advertising and marketing is trying to do to them.

“We don’t watch a lot of television. They love Cake Boss (on TLC). They watch American Idol. But as we watch their favorite shows, sometimes something inappropriate is advertised. An R-rated movie, for instance.It scares the s4356 out of them. How can they advertise that during family friendly shows?

“I say to them, ‘What are they trying to sell you?’ Commercials are more subtle than the old hard-sell. My kids’ll say, ‘They want you to drink their beer’ or ‘drive their car.’ And then we try to laugh it off with the kids. ‘You really think I’m going to want to drink beer based on that commercial?’

“They’re aware that there’s manipulation out there. We’re not Amish. The kids are going to be influenced in ways we’re not going to like. We just have to stay aware of it and try to help them navigate themselves into a nice life, one with values.”

He tries to squeeze in a small film in between seasons of Californication — though that is getting harder to do — not because of the TV schedule, which is only 1/4 of the year.

“Independent film reminds me of that game show where they stuck you in a booth and turned a fan on and the contestant got to grab as much cash as he could hold onto. That’s what financing these little indie features is like these days. You line one up, the money falls through.”

He directs one episode of the TV show a year, and has directed a film. Is he looking for more behind-the-camera gigs?

“In some ways, I feel like I’ve served a long apprenticeship and I’m on my game enough as an actor to be directing more often.”

Is he a screamer on the set?

“No noooo,” he laughs. “It’s good to scream once. I know a director who does it once, on the first day.”

So, if, as he maintains, the viral marketing of The Joneses has been with us ever since there have been sports starts and movie stars that the general public wants to emulate, what sort of car should I be shopping for? You know, to drive what he drives?

“Think hybrid. Think electric. Try to reduce that carbon imprint. Make that decision that makes companies push to be cleaner than their competition. People associate ‘green’ with hardship. But when people out here go green and companies get deeper into this, you’re gong to see it’s cooler and more fun to be green than to be wasteful. It’s getting less expensive to make that altruistic choice.”

At a press conference in Los Angeles for his new independent film, The Joneses, David Duchovny just couldn’t duck Californication questions from pesky television reporters who wanted to know just where Hank Moody could go next season, as well as how long Duchovny would consider keeping the character alive.

“Last year was a descent. We went as far down as we could and still keep it a comedy,” Duchovny shared with a chuckle in his voice. “And we’re not trying to make this a drama, so this year will be about rising up.” It would pretty much have to, we guess!

The actor, who currently lives in New York with his family, only comes out here to Los Angeles only periodically to shoot. “It’s not the X-Files ten month long shoot,” Duchovny explained. “It’s almost like a vacation!” Therefore, he enjoys shooting Californication more than some of the other projects in his past.

That being said, then, just how long does Duchovny think– or want the show to keep going? After all, the show that truly put him on the map– the aforementioned X-Files– lasted for nearly a decade. “It will get canceled before I get tired of it,” he smiled into the sea of reporters.

But realistically? He thinks the show, which has completed three seasons can easily go to six or seven, keeping Hank Moody– and Duchovny himself– in our homes for years to come.

David Duchovny is about to go to work on the next season of his Showtime series Californication. The sexual escapades of frustrated writer Hank Moody will continue to amuse audiences as Hank himself digs his way out of the hole he got into last year.

“Well, we left Hank last year going to jail,” Duchovny said at a press conference where he was promoting his new movie, The Joneses. “It’s kind of like last year was a descent. It’s a comedy too so we went about as far down as we could in terms of keeping this a comedic show. We’re not trying to be a drama so now I think this year is going to be about rising up and using that as the low point.”

The show will introduce several new characters, with A-list guest stars to play them. The guest stars have not yet been signed, but Duchovny revealed the roles they would play. “My lawyer is one,” he said. “And a famous actress, a famous Hollywood actress. Every season is always like a new milieu and a new set of guest stars, which is really refreshing for all of us. Last year we had Kathleen Turner and Peter Gallagher. This year, we’re going to have some new people as well.”

For the actress, the show would not ask a star to play themselves in a self-referential role. They’ve created the character of an actress who only exists in the world of Californication.

“Probably a fictional person, a fictional famous person. Well, we’re all pretty fictional but not a name that you’d recognize [in the real world.]”

Duchovny likes having strong characters for Hank to go up against. “For me, when approaching Hank, what I always like is for him to have a worthy adversary. He’s kind of a malcontent so he’s always arguing people. When he’s arguing with people that can’t argue back or aren’t strong adversaries, I see it as bullying and I don’t like it as much. When he has somebody like the self-help guru in the second year, things like that I like very much because he’s actually fighting for something rather than just destroying things.”

Hank’s sexual escapades have to get more and more outrageous every year. When the show starts with a woman punching him in the face mid-coitus, and Hank vomiting on an expensive painting, it’s hard for the writers to top themselves.

“It’s tough,” Duchovny said. “It’s hard. There’s only so much puke, you know.”

Californication enters its fourth season this year with no signs of slowing down. Duchovny was a regular on Fox’s The X-Files for nine years and still guest starred in the final two. He’s game to continue Californication as long as it takes.

“It’s such a pleasure to do because it’s almost like a vacation. Especially now that I’m living in New York, I get to come out here and shoot it for three months. Unlike an X-Files, it’s not a 10 ½ month schedule so I really like doing it. I think it’ll get cancelled before I get tired of it. Cable doesn’t have to go that long because the economics of it are different from free TV. I would hope six, six seasons, 12 each, 12 episodes per season.”

Maybe Hank could even take a trip to New York one year. “I would love that because then I could work out of home but it’s hard to imagine a show called Californication. Unfortunately, because of the logistics of shooting a 12 episode season, I think if you’re shooting 25, you could shoot four in New York and have a little thing in New York, like The Brady Bunch went to Hawaii. When you’re only 12, you pretty much have to stay put.”

Californication goes back into production April 19, with a season premiere anticipated for September on Showtime.

Source: Hollywood News

FROM TODAYONLINE: DAVID Duchovny is mildly shocked that there will be so much rampant Californication going on in family-friendly Singapore. Starting tonight, we get to enjoy a double dose of his famously naughty Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning show.

Fans will be eager to herald the return of Californication’s latest season to FX and to discover more of the challenges that face disillusioned writer Hank Moody, who is constantly just out of reach of the woman he loves, and hopes constantly that one more bottle of beer and one more one-night-stand really couldn’t make things any worse.

This season, Hank becomes a teacher at a college, which means he’s surrounded by impressionable young girls eager to score an “A” for effort.

“Wait a minute,” you’re thinking. “A show about sex, drugs and alcohol on free-to-air TV?” Don’t worry, we’re sure the censors have gone snippety-snip accordingly. Besides, Duchovny himself is eager to play down the racy aspects of the show, calling it “good clean fun”.

Of course, since he was speaking over the phone from Los Angeles, we couldn’t tell if he was holding up his sarcasm sign. But following the actor’s little sex addiction escapade in 2008, it’s little wonder he seemed to want to distance himself from his character, saying: “When I played, for instance, Mulder, I didn’t have to believe in aliens. You don’t have to believe the things the character says … We can all relate to all of the basic human emotions, and those are all of the things that are in any show.”

Anyway, it’s pretty easy to see through Hank’s boozing and fornicating to what’s really all-important to him: His relationships with his daughter and with the woman he loves in a very monogamous manner. See? Good clean fun.

Which have you enjoyed more: The X-Files or Californication?

Well, X-Files was much more demanding – physically, and of my time. Certainly it was a special time in my life; my career.

It was really my first taste of big success, and that was all a heady experience, and fascinating, and life-changing.

The show itself I always felt was terrific. And, you know, I was one of the main moving parts of that. It was a big, big machine. Californication feels smaller, in a way, and satisfies my desire to do comedy.

So, they both satisfy very different aspects of what I consider to be my expressiveness, or whatever. I don’t know if one’s more enjoyable than the other. One was certainly more tiring than the other!

At first glance, Californication seems to appeal more to a male audience. Is it a testosterone-fuelled show that women will have no patience for?

It’s funny you should ask that, because I would’ve thought as well that it was for a male audience, but during the first year, they came to us with the demographics, and it turned out that more women than men were watching.

We were confused at first. And then one of the producers said: “It’s actually a woman’s world in this show.”

Every woman in the show has got all of the power. Hank is desperately in love with Karen; he’s being manipulated by Mia; he’s in love with his daughter and she’s got him wrapped around her finger. On the surface it may look like a man’s show, but I think it’s actually a woman’s show.

How would you describe the show’s brand of humour?

As “adult”, really. It’s articulate, it’s verbal and it’s also slapstick. You’ve got this protagonist, Hank, who’s hyper-articulate – he’s a writer, and his sense of humour is often based on language.

And then you’ve got these physical situations – not just the intimate ones, but there’s a lot of slapstick, and there’s fighting. He gets hit a lot; he falls down a lot; he’s a clown in a way, a physical clown.

So, it ranges from intelligent, articulate humour to the silly slapstick that I love as well.

What can we expect in Season Three?

Well, certainly more of the same comedy that we’ve been doing, but in Season Three there’s a couple of new characters – new foils, new enemies – for Hank and I think it’s always important for Hank to be fighting with some kind of ideal, and people who personify that ideal. There’s this self-help author that just galls Hank. He’s got a good enemy in Season Three.

What do you think is going to get cut from Season One when it goes on free-to-air TV in Singapore?

That’s so difficult to say. There’s language, too. I don’t know. I can’t imagine.

I have thought about this for syndication for when it airs on free-to-air TV in America or other territories, and I’ve wondered how it can be re-cut or how it can be dubbed to make sense.

It’s a big task, and the fact that they’ve done it is wonderful and surprising to me. I’m glad that I didn’t have to make those decisions! I would love to see it. Now I’m curious.

Do you think it will subtract from the essence of the show?

Well, I don’t know. Certainly the essence of the show is the human situation and not people’s bodies or curse words. So I would hope that the humour and the heart of the show would remain.

And of course it’s all good clean fun, right?

Well, that’s what I’m saying. It really is. We’re not making any statements. We’re making a comedy for people over the age of 15.

A lot of comedies, it seems to me, are aimed at kids like, 12 to 16 or something, and I sit there and I’m kind of flabbergasted as to what’s funny. So this is a comedy that I might watch as an adult, and not the other more obvious aspects of it that people like to talk about from time to time.

David is nominated for best actor in this years Golden Globe Awards for his role in Californation and the ceremony is this Sunday Jan. 17. The show will air on NBC so check your local listing.

Our friends at Zap2it say,

Best actor, comedy series
(Nominees: Alec Baldwin, “30 Rock”; Steve Carell, “The Office”; David Duchovny, “Californication”; Thomas Jane, “Hung”; Matthew Morrison, “Glee”)

Will win: Baldwin. It was a close call over Duchovny, but the Zap2it team favors the man who’s won two of the past three years.

Should win: Duchovny. He won in 2008 for “Californication,” and his work on the show this season was even better.

And of course we agree. Good luck to David and his Californation team!

David has been nominated for a 2010 Golden Globe Award for his role as Hank on Californication. Congratulations David!

20. BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A TELEVISION SERIES – COMEDY OR MUSICAL
a. ALEC BALDWIN 30 ROCK
b. STEVE CARELL THE OFFICE
c. DAVID DUCHOVNY CALIFORNICATION
d. THOMAS JANE HUNG
e. MATTHEW MORRISON GLEE

There wasn’t much foreplay involved: Showtime has picked up Californication for a fourth season after airing just two episodes of the comedy’s third campaign.

The premium network has ordered another season of the David Duchovy-starrer, with the 12 new episodes set to bow in 2010, according to Showtime Networks president of Entertainment Robert Greenblatt.

The order follows a strong start to the third season, which finds Duchovny’s Hank Moody working as a creative writer professor at a Los Angeles college and encountering a new set of lovely ladies and sundry complications to his family life.The Sept. 28 debut produced a record 821,000 watchers, a 57% jump over Californication’s sophomore season start. The second episode of its third season premiered Oct. 4.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Did you miss it? If so, here is the first episode of season 3:

Episode Synopsis: CALIFORNICATION “Wish You Were Here” Season 3 Premiere – Following Karen’s move to New York, Hank Moody does his best to raise daughter Becca by himself. But being a single dad isn’t easy, especially with Becca starting to question his authority more than ever. To make matters worse, Becca’s new best friend Chelsea has a fondness for sex, drugs and trouble. After a run-in with Chelsea’s straight-laced mother Felicia, a teacher at a local university, Hank reluctantly accepts a dinner invitation. Hank does his best to tolerate the various academics in attendance, including Felicia’s stuffy hubby Stacy Koons, the Dean of the university. Things get a bit out of hand when Hank insists on having drinks with a teetotaling professor… Meanwhile, Charlie moves back in with soon-to-be-ex-wife Marcy as they sort out the details of their impending divorce. And on the employment front, Charlie sets up shop at a talent agency owned by fading super-agent Sue Collini.