David Duchovny Wants To Return To His Best Role?
In a world where every TV series, whether successful or not, is susceptible to reboots, remakes, or revivals, it is only a matter of time before your favorite project is brought up for the treatment. David Duchovny spoke up about the possibility of returning to his most famous role as Fox Mulder in The X-Files on the podcast, The Discourse. According to Movie Web, the actor has very specific needs for the return to be possible, and the most important among those needs is to do something different.
According to David Duchovny, there isn’t a world where they can just pick up where they left off and do The X-Files the same as they used to because the world has changed. While people want to see it, and Chris Carter (writer and producer) no doubt has plenty of people telling him they have tons of ideas, Duchovny needs more to pull his character off the shelf and get back in the game. He says that his very specific circumstances for a return to the series are if the pitch brought something new to the table; he commented that playing the character in both his 30s and his 60s would be an interesting challenge, but it can’t be done in the same way.
The actor also states that the same approach is what brought him back to play the character again after leaving the first time, when he returned 13 years after the end of Season 9 in 2002, for Season 10 in 2015. All in all, David Duchovny has spent 191 episodes on The X-Files as the FBI agent Fox Mulder, investigating the supernatural and the government conspiracy alongside his trusty partner, Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). In 2008, the pair returned for a film to revive the characters in the feature film The X-Files: I Want to Believe.
There are two main factors that could keep David Duchovny from returning to The X-Files, outside of the storyline or his schedule, and that is the inclusion of the other two main pillars of the series. Gillian Anderson worked alongside Duchovny as his loyal partner and fellow paranormal investigator, Dana Scully, for the entirety of the series and also has said she wouldn’t return to work on the series without him. And the third puzzle piece that would have to fall into place would be the inclusion of the writer and creator, Chris Carter.
All three of them have found success outside of the supernatural series. David Duchovny followed up his The X-Files work with seven seasons as the lead on the Showtime dramedy Californication and also directed and produced his own series titled Aquarius. Gillian Anderson has gone on to appear in The Fall and Hannibal series, along with portraying Margaret Thatcher in the Netflix series, The Crown.
It is impossible to overstate the impact that The X-Files had on pop culture and the industry as a whole; it is possible that we would never have gotten a series like Supernatural without the previous success of the show. So it isn’t surprising that fans are clamoring for more, but for David Duchovny, the studio must follow a specific path to entice him back to The X-Files.
