From The Pyrdonian Renegade

Coffee, Tea, and David Duchovny
by Rhonda Krafchin

An afternoon chat with the star of "The X-Files"

The first thing David Duchovny, star of the cult series "The X-Files" on Fox, would like to know, as we sit in a rain-splashed cafe, is what Creator/Exec. Producer Chris Carter has said about him. This is not the demand of an egomaniacal actor, but rather the modest curiosity of one who can't quite seem to grasp his place in the world of television. "I try to stay Socratic about the whole thing. It's like Socrates said, `I know nothing.'"

Duchovny is in a calm state, having just finished a killer Power Yoga class, reserved for those in great physical shape. In baggy sweats and a green t-shirt, a flannel shirt hanging loosely on his lean frame, Duchovny is the antithesis of the of the conservatively-dressed FBI Agent Fox Mulder, his character on "The X-Files." His face is whiskered, and his hair slightly askew from the workout. He is whimsical and good-natured, and seems to find it very funny that Carter described him as having a "facile mind." He wonders, kiddingly, if Carter had said something else far less complimentary. I assure him that was not the case.

But Duchovny does enjoy working with Carter. "He's got a very facile mind," Duchovny quips, then adds with all seriousness. "Chris is very collaborative. He respects what I have to say. We have different ideas about Mulder from time to time... I'm always trying to make him a little funnier, a little lighter. He's always afraid that that's going to take away from the mystery and suspense, and the scare. That's a constant battle we have." But Duchovny has no illusions about who always wins. "He's the boss," Duchovny said. "But then again," he adds with a mischevious grin. "He's not always there. When he's away, I do what I want. Then he comes back and scolds me."

In fact, the self-effacing humor and easygoing, devil-may-care attitude of Duchovny often do come out in Mulder. Adding a little color to the single-minded character is done with intent, and, according to Duchovny's fan mail, often appreciated. "I've argued some against every emotional moment being linked back to Mulder's sister. I don't like that. I think it was important to set that up as my character's foundational interest in the supernatural... My sister disappeared, was abducted, I think, by aliens. But we have to get beyond that. It's not realistic in a person's life to think that everything goes back to one event... So hopefully we'll get away from just relating everything back to my syster and get more into, maybe a relationship with a woman.

The current "relationship" with character Dana Scully will be on a short hiatus next season as actress Gillian Anderson is pregnant. "I'll have more work to do, which I can't even imagine." Duchovny, all jokin aside, does seem dog-tired. One too many questions about the future of the X-Files and he answered dismissively, "I'm trying to take a break right now. I'm not even thinking about it."

But it's easy to find escape this late afternoon in a neighborhood coffee shop. The cleansing rain has given way to blue, cloud-speckled skies. "I've lived in LA for almost five years now," he said as the setting sun streaks across our table. "My brother's here, my girlfriend, I miss LA when I go away, though it was a very good year to be away!" Shooting in Vancouver, B.C., kept Duchovny a safe distance from wildfires, floods, and the devastating earthquake. "I was pretty lucky," he admits, although he almost made it for the big Monday morning shaker on January 17. "I was visiting my girlfriend... I was here for the weekend. I was having a good time and called our producer, Bob Goodwin, and asked `Is there any way I could take a morning flight? Can you push the call back?' He tried, and couldn't do it. We're very lucky, because if I'd stayed, I wouldn't have been able to fly out for two or three days and they would have had to shut down production. Almost the Hand of God came down on the X-Files," he said with a laugh.

With Vancouver now a second home, and the pressures of playing a series leading man, Duchovny hasn't quite gotten a handle on the subtleties of change in his life. "The amount of work has been so intense. I haven't really gotten to see exactly how my life has changed, because I haven't really had a life. I've just been working." Though he claims to rarely being recognised on the street, we're interrupted halfway through the interview by a man wanting to know if "The X-Files" will be back next season. There is no doubt about that. Shooting for the second season begins in July, leaving a short time for recuperation.

With the first season's 24 episodes completed, "The X-Files" has had its share of good and bad stories. Duchovny lists the season finale as his favorite, along with "Ice" and "Fallen Angel." He also dispelled any theories for the future of Deep Throat, who was shot in the final episode. "He's dead," Duchovny says with finality. There are also those episodes he recalls with little affection, namely "Ghost in the Machine" and "Lazarus." He admitted "There was one recently that I detested. The one with the little girl." But Duchovny quickly added, "If we can turn out 18 good ones, I think we're doing much better than anyone hoped for. It's not amazing that TV's as bad as it is, it's amazing that some of it is as good as it is... I know what it takes to do a good job. It's very difficult."

The unusual dramatic parameters of "The X-Files" occasionally make it difficult to develop its main characters. Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are often left as mere observers of that week's other worldly phenomenon. "If you watch the show, you know that some are different than others," Duchovny explained. "There's no way that two people could have the amount of experiences that we do if we were emotionally and personally involved in every case. So for every two that we are involved in personally, you have to have two where we're just detectives. We're just agents trying to solve a case who don't have anything at stake, personally."

Much of the 33-year-old actor's work has been in feature films, including "The Rapture," "Kalifornia," and Showtime's "The Red Shoe Diaries," most recently. "TV is so different from movies," he said. "If you can imagine, we shoot about eight pages of script a day, and in a movie we'd probably shoot two to three pages in a day. We're doing 400 percent more work. It's frustrating that you can't give it the kind of time that you might want to Then again, it teaches you good habits and bad habits. The bad... that you have to do stuff on the spur of the moment. The good habit is that you don't agonize over things. You just realize you've got to do it today and tomorrow it's toilet paper. Move on. Instincts are all you have. You don't have time to prepare.

The third acting venue that Duchovny has worked in-- live theatre-- has dynamics all its own. "There's something different about working with an audience," he said, "because you're working *with* an audience. You're making an experience together in the present moment, rather than making something for future use or recorded use. There's a different feeling and a different pleasure that you get out of it."

One might think that from an actor's point of view, the theatre would be the more nervewracking experience, but Duchovny disagrees. "As an actor you're always dealing with nervousness or anxiety and tension. When you're working on film or in television, you're just doing little bits and pieces... you have to deal with your nervousness and tension in each scene or shot. In a play, you come out, say your first few lines, and then you relax. You have an hour and 45 minutes of bliss. In television you don't get that. It's not like you ever relax. I'll have days when all of a sudden, I'll just be a basket case. I've been doing the show for eight months and I'll ask myself, why am I nervous? But that's just the way it is.

Each actor handles anxiety in their own way. For Duchovny "I just try and figure out why I might be nervous. If I can't do that, I'll try to yell and scream, do (yoga) positions. If that doesn't work, I get mad at somebody else," he says with a grin. Sitting in the setting sun, it's rather difficult to imagine Duchovny getting mad at someone. Today he seems far too reserved, barely letting out an exclamation as an enormous Great Dane saunters breathtakingly close to us.

Glancing at a copy of "The Renegade," Duchovny made sure I knew of his alma mater. Raised in New York City, Duchovny attended Princeton University and went on to graduate studies in English Literature at Yale. The state of New Jersey has obviously made an impression. He recalled the sign "Trenton Makes, the World Takes," on a bridge in the state capitol. Duchovny's plans for doctoral studies and a career in teaching were interrupted in 1987 when his attentions turned to acting. His PhD dissertation, "Magic and Technology in Contemporary Fiction and Poetry" was never completed. "It's a good topic," said Duchovny. "If any graduate student wants it for a dissertation project, feel free. Help yourself."

Lately, Duchovny is far too busy to contemplate any writing, though he hopes to get a little done during the hiatus. "The state of mind that you need to have to write, and the state of mind that you have when you're acting are very different," he said. "You don't want to spend energy on things when you're writing. You're conserving everything. You're not even good to the people that you love. When you're acting, it's very similar. You don't know why you're saving it up, but you know you're going to have to put it out at some point. In order to do one of them well, you have to give it everything that you have.

Assuming "The X-Files" continues its upward trend, Duchovny should be concentrating most of his energy on acting in the next few years. "I'd like to write, actually, in this little time that I have now," he says. "I can't do both at the same time." After a moment of contemplation, he added. "I don't know how Sam Sheppard does it." Well, we might add, it would be interesting to see what the PhD candidate could turn out in the off-season.