Have you experienced this kind of chemistry in any other films/projects you’ve worked on?
“It’s different. There are shades of it in other projects and films, but there’s just something different with David. That’s the unexplainable bit that I can’t quite put a finger on, and it’s kind of like it was a gift for us to have this experience together. But it’s not necessarily quantifiable.”
GA, Buzzline, 2008
The X Files set is a virile spot, full of jockish joking and camaraderie. “There’s a lot of testosterone on the set, “ she agrees. Chris Carter is an avid surfer, and David Duchovny is a longtime jock, but Gillian Anderson, who also surfs, holds her own in this company. “I tend to be guy-friendly. “
She pauses, then says the following slowly and carefully: “It only bothers me when it makes it difficult for inclusion in any way. I am very independent. I can take care of myself, I don’t feel left out. But when it has to do with work, and my input on the work, I need to be heard. I will not tolerate not being heard as a result of excess testosterone. “
“And is the group of people good about hearing you? “ I ask.
She pauses and says, “Uhh … yes and no. “
MULDER: If you have any doubts, any doubts at all, just call off that surgery this morning. And then we’ll get out of here. Just me and you.
SCULLY: As far away from the darkness as we can get?
MULDER: I’m not sure it works that way. I think maybe the darkness finds you and me.
SCULLY: I know it does.
MULDER: But let it try.
JS: The last episode of X-Files, though, you kissed, uh, Gillian, which is sort of what it was all building up to.
DD: I guess. You know, finally — she’d already had my baby so I figured it was time to kiss her. Some weird kind of time warp there.
JS: I kissed her in a movie like two years prior to that, so it’s kind of funny that you got my sloppy seconds.
The Daily Show, 2001
“Gillian has a lot of will,” Duchovny says two days after the Emmys. He and Anderson have a big scene in a hospital room, and as Duchovny utters his lines, Anderson tears up.
“Print it! Excellent! Fucking great, great!” the director cheers. A few minutes later, Anderson approaches her costar and says, “Great David.”
“Hey, thanks for that last one,” he says. The tears helped him nail his lines. “I thought maybe you had conjunctivitis. But you were really crying. At least one of us was good.”
Allure, December 1997
18 YEARS AGO TODAY: Dana Scully & Fox Mulder met for the first time.
Happy Birthday to The X Files, you brilliant show!!
“I blocked it out until the last moment where all of a sudden it hit me, that this person that I was standing in front of as I know him and have known him for such a long time, that this aspect of our relationship was coming to a close. We embraced and I just burst into tears. We held our embrace for a really long time and I think it was just flooding over us, the importance of this agreement that we’ve had to be in each other’s lives in a very powerful way.”
Gillian Anderson
“I think it was written that Scully gives Mulder a kiss on the forehead. Kim Manners was there [directing], and I was so confused at that point that I didn’t trust my feelings about it because I had so many personal feelings. It was eight years of my life. I didn’t know what would be an appropriate ending. I didn’t know. And when Kim and I read it as we were about to shoot it, he said, ‘We’ve done that 100 times, the whole hand holding and the kiss on the forehead. Let’s do a real kiss.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, that feels right.’”
David Duchovny
“The last shot in the picture was Gillian handing David the baby in her bedroom. David leaned over and gave her a kiss, and the camera then pulled back out of the doorway and just kept going down the hall. We got the shot, and we cut it and printed it; the nurse came and took the baby away. And David put his arms around Gillian, and she put her arms around him, and they stood there for about ten minutes, and never said a word to each other. The tears were just rolling down their faces, and the whole crew stood there and watched this in silence. It was truly one of the most emotional experiences I’ve ever witnessed in my life.”
Kim Manners, director
