After five years, Duchovny is considering leaving the highly popular XF. We ask him why, and whether he sees a future in the films...

It's impossible to imagine TXF FBI Agent FM being played by anyone else. However, in the beginning, actor DD wasn't particularly enthused about doing TXF.

"My agent said, 'Let's not get you involved in a tv show because things are going well and Kalifornia is going to come out soon. Let's see what happens,'" recalls DD, speaking at a posh Beverly Hills hotel while dressed casually in trousers and a light blue shirt. "I said, 'Fine,' because I'd never had any luck in getting a tv role, really. It seemed I didn't have the right energy for it, whatever that means. Then my agent turned around and sent me TXF script. She said, 'This is the best script I've read this year. Take a look at it and see if maybe you want to go in.' So I read it and one of the reasons I took it was that I thought it would be a good show but that it would NEVER get picked up." He laughs heartily. "It's about aliens. I thought they're either here or they're not here, and that once you showed them it was all over."

Cult Following

Of course, TXF was not only picked up, but went from cult curiosity to international phenomenon in the space of its first five years on the air. And this summer, TXF takes to the big screen with its first feature film.

The movie makes an effort to stretch beyond the established base of XF fans. The movie will attract the uninitiated "because I think it's a good movie," offers DD. "It's tough for me to sell it. [But] I don't think you need to know the characters or the history of the show, although it certainly doesn't hurt. It's a really big, nice-looking film, a smart, thrilling kind of a movie that's fun to watch."

Although the movie promises to answer some long-standing mythology questions, DD is personally more interested in discovering more about the disappearance of his little sister. "It's not so important to me to say, 'I told you so. Aliens do exist,'" DD explains. "I want to know what they did to my sister. I want to know what my father did. Was he a good guy or a bad guy? Any questions a son would want to know about his father, Mulder wants to know about his father. Did his mother have an affair? He's like Hamlet in that sense. Did she have an affair with CSM? As an actor and a person, these questions are much more interesting to me than, 'We saw an alien and he had this shaped head, like the ones in Aliens, not like the ones in ID4.' That's less important to me than the emotional history."

The Kiss

Speaking of emotions, the emotional undercurrent in the film is particularly strong between Mulder and his scientific-minded partner, Dana Scully (GA). The near-kiss in the movie was a culmination of five years worth of tension. Yet DD feels that a relationship between M&S shouldn't happen. "At this point, I think no. You know, it's changed over the years," he says of his attitude towards the partners' relationship. "But I think Chris has made the right decision and I think it's a really fun chastity at this point."

Mulder can never be happy, according to DD. "That's not for him. That's for other people. Because he's a questing hero," he explains. "If I was a fan I wouldn't want to see Mulder happy. I want to see Mulder actively pursuing something. That's what he does."

After five seasons, it's very difficult for DD to pinpoint specific episodes as favourites. "I like a number of them for different reasons. I like some of the dramatic ones," DD says. "I like some of the funny ones. Bad Blood was one of my favourites. Darin Morgan's shows are great. The wonderful thing about TXF is that it's so versatile. We can do so many different kinds of shows in a season. We can do a monster show and then a funny show, an alien show and then a drama."

One thing that spreads like wildfire after five years are rumours of discord and tension between DD and GA. Clearly, DD and GA's professional relationship is just that. "Because we don't socialize, people can easily make the leap and say that we don't like each other," observes DD. "We're still both doing the show. We're the only show I can think of where the two stars didn't leave one another. People always leave when they don't get along. Look at [Bruce Willis and Cybill Shephered in] Moonlighting. If they get along, they stay together. I think the fact that Gillian and I are still doing the show speaks a lot more than anything I can tell you right now."

Although he's been on magazine covers everywhere, DD has yet to feel the impact of fame with regard to having his privacy invaded by his fans. "Just on the street, but I think that's just a general fan reaction," he clarifies, "and I don't think it's specific to TXF fans. I think that people see somebody they recognize and they have a reaction." The weirdest place DD was ever recognized was about three years ago, "when I was stepping out of the shower naked at the gym," the actor laughs. "It was like the weirdest timing."

Power to the People

He has felt the impact of XF fame, however, when it came to vocalizing his desire to move the show from Vancouver to LA. While promoting his movie, Playing God, last fall, DD was adamant about wanting to move to LA, and the press had a field day, especially in Vancouver. "It was a hard year. It was a very hostile environment after a while in Vancouver, at least as far as the press is concerned," says DD. "The people sometimes took that cue. That was a lesson I learned, that the press really sets the tone of discourse, the tone of how people are perceived - and it's very powerful. I think a lot of the times that writers in general don't realize that kind of power that they have to set the initial tone. The initial tone of me wanting to move to LA was turned into, 'I hate you,'" he explains, referring specifically to his perceived attitude towards Vancouver. "Which wasn't it at all. And people reacted to that, which was, 'I hate you, too.' That's how it went all year long. It was too bad, because I had a really good time in that city."

Setting the record straight, DD elaborates on why he wanted the show to relocate. "I don't have any need to show my power. I just have a need to do what works for me in my life," he says bluntly. "We went to shoot that show in Vancouver five years ago, and that's all I thought we were doing - shooting the pilot there. I came to this with more experience than anybody else on the show, and therefore, I had a lot to say before I signed up. And one was I don't want to move from LA. And they said, 'Oh, we'll just shoot the pilot.' That didn't happen. Every year, it became, 'Oh, next year we'll come back to LA.' It became time for me to put my foot down and to say, these things were promised to me, and now my life has changed. I have my wife in LA. It's not my problem that the show is going to be harder to shoot in LA or look different - that's your problem. Let's just get it done."

Location Change

Much has been theorized about how the show's look might change with the move to LA, but does DD foresee any direct effect of the move on his character? "He's going to be tanned and looking like George Hamilton," the actors says with his trademarked dry humour. "Yeah, it'll be different. It'll look different. It'll be a harder show to make." The humour resurfaces again. "One change will be that high-ranking officials in the American government will no longer have Canadian accents."

For more than a year now, DD's been married to actress TL, who recently was seen in the hit summer film Deep Impact. "I feel like I've found a good match," DD remarks. "Sometimes, I wish I had met her earlier. [But] if I'd taken the plunge [into marriage] earlier, it wouldn't have been with Tea."

That the two are together at all is nothing short of a twist of fate. The two first crossed paths around 1992 or so, recalls DD, when "we both had to audition for The Tonight Show because we weren't famous enough to make it on the show. It was a lunch with the bookers from the Leno Show, and they invited me and Tea Leoni for some barbaric reason. And we both sat down and it was this weird kind of audition in front of other people with your conversational skills. It is what it was. Perform, but don't perform too much. Tea was really charming and outgoing and funny and I wasn't. She got on the show and I didn't. And I was mad at her. After that every time I'd hear her name I'd be like...grrrrrrr."

That changed, of course, years later after the two hooked up via the mutual agent. Early in their marriage, DD was said to have been the romantic, proposing to her every day. "Not any more," he laughs. "I've got her now. I haven't proposed to her in a while."

Tea Time

Instead of working during the hiatus, DD and TL went on vacation in Hawaii. "It was the first vacation without anything on either end of it," laughs DD. "It was a great vacation." Although DD would have liked to do a film over the hiatus, the timing didn't work out. And the tough thing about TXF is that it's next to impossible for the production to schedule around his absence, should the right movie opportunity come along. "America wouldn't stand for it," jokes DD. Indeed, a common gripe among fans is that there wasn't enough of M&S working together in the second half of the season - a reality which was more due to the actors being needed for post-production and re-shoots on the film than it was a story device. Working around a movie schedule is "really not viable," he continues. "It's not like an er where you have 10 doctors or five doctors and five nurses. Where George Clooney can go and do a scene here and there and not be missed completely. I don't think you can lose Mulder or Scully from the show. It's not an ensemble show, it's a two-person show."

"It just takes too long to do a season of the show," he continues. "It takes 10 months. That doesn't leave me any time to do other work, to have a family, whatever. The show is an all-consuming job. If I could play Mulder for five months of the year on tv, I would. But I can't. So, [doing] films would be my preference. Shooting the show in LA will make things easier, but it won't make me continue on past whatever my contract says at this point."

Leaving the Filing

DD's desire to move on from TXF is no secret. But when asked if he was tired of playing Mulder, DD demures. "It's not really the show or Mulder. It's the bare fact of doing the same show and the same part for five years. It's no reflection on the writing of the show, or the nature of the show. If you were in a running series of Hamlet for five years, it would be the same thing," he maintains. "I would be tired of trying to get my mother to admit she slept with my uncle. I'm tired of shaking the Cigarette Smoking Man and trying to get him to admit he slept with my mother. And it is Hamlet."

The trick is keeping the role fresh and interesting after five years. "Some days it's not fresh and it's not exciting. Some days it is," DD admits. "It usually has to do with the challenge of the material. If there's a difficult scene to do or a fun scene to do or a challenging scene to do, then it's fresh and exciting."

DD doesn't fear the spectre of typecasting. "The movie will go on. The show will go on. We'll do other movies, other XF movies. But I did roles before this, and I'll do roles after this. If people don't want to see me in other roles, that's my misfortune, but I don't see that happening." END