On David Duchovny’s podcast, Fail Better, the co-stars shared that there were times during filming when they didn’t talk to each other off-camera for weeks.
David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, the stars of The X-Files, are reflecting on their long friendship and working together, including the mistakes they’ve made along the way.
Gillian Anderson will join David Duchovny for a heartfelt talk on the next episode of his podcast Fail Better, which airs on Nov. 12. The 56-year-old actress and author, whose book Want came out in September, has been a fan of Duchovny’s show for a long time. Back in July, she shared a video on social media to praise Fail Better and called his interviews with people like Sean Penn and Gabor Maté “deep, honest, and smart.”
Advertisement In the new episode, Anderson told Duchovny,
When I first started listening and reached out to you, I wasn’t thinking about talking to you about my book. I was just enjoying the show and really appreciating how deep your conversations went. I felt like I was learning more about you than I ever knew before.
We know each other really well, but at the same time, in some strange way, we don’t really know each other.
Duchovny, said
Over the past 30 years, during which they worked together on The X-Files for 11 seasons and two movies, Duchovny said,
I don’t think we ever sat down and asked, ‘What was your childhood like?’
We didn’t. And why would we? We were busy, We have a special closeness that we probably don’t have with many others, and we went through things together that we didn’t experience with anyone else. Sure, there were other people on set, but when it comes to our experience as actors, it was unique. So, I thought it would be interesting to explore.
Anderson agreed
Duchovny shared that he thought the hardest part of their conversation would be talking about what he called his “failure of friendship.”
He told a magazine in June that he and Anderson felt a connection right from their audition for The X-Files.
When we were reading together on the stairs before the audition, we knew right away we could work well together, There was an instant connection in the way we worked, and that lasted for many years.
he said
During their conversation on Fail Better, Duchovny told Anderson that, at one point during The X-Files original run from 1993 to 2002, they started to drift apart.
There was a long time when we weren’t even talking to each other off-camera. There was a lot of tension. But it didn’t seem to matter for the work, because we’re both a bit crazy, I guess. We could just go out there and do what we had to do.
He remembered,
That’s pretty crazy, It’s wild that we could show all those emotions, feelings, and attraction on camera, but then not talk to each other for weeks at a time.
Anderson agreed
Duchovny thought maybe it was a good choice. “Maybe we were saving it up, I don’t know,” he said.
But I could’ve handled things better. And, as you know, we went through some really crazy stuff with this show. We went from being pretty inexperienced to suddenly becoming a huge hit, even before the Internet. We were just trying to figure out who we were.
Duchovny pointed out that they were both very young at the time, and the success of the show completely changed their lives.
Even with the tensions, the two have stayed friends for over 30 years. In 2021, Anderson posted a picture of them together with her dog, and it went viral. Earlier this year, Duchovny told PEOPLE that they’re like “family.”
When you go through a big experience like the success we had with the show, only we really understand what it was like to be at the center of it, It’s like being in the same family. We share something special from that time, and that connection never goes away.
he said
You can listen to their full conversation in the latest episode of Duchovny’s Fail Better podcast, which drops on Nov. 12 across all major podcast platforms.
Source: People