Gillian Anderson is a Leo.
As such, the actress says, she's "good at being bossy." And that came in
handy after she convinced creator/producer Chris Carter to let her make her
writing and directing debuts with "All Things," an episode of "The X-Files"
that will air April 9.
"What happened was that I sat down right after a conversation with my
manager and started writing an outline for the entire episode," Anderson
says. "I didn't plan on that all the characters came out. All the beats
came out, and everything just flowed onto the page. I guess it was needing
to get out there somewhere.
"The next day I went in and pitched the idea to Chris Carter," she recalls,
"and I told him that if I were going to write it I also wanted to direct
it. He said, 'Great. Begin, and show me what you have when you have it.'
"And I kind of started from there."
Anderson's story -- which writer/producer Frank Spotnitz helped give that
"X-Files" touch -- finds Scully (Anderson) grappling with sins from her
past when she encounters Dr. Daniel Waterston and his daughter, Maggie. It
seems that Scully and Waterston had an affair years earlier, a dalliance
that wrecked WaterstonOs family and compelled Scully to join the FBI.
As the hour unfolds, it explores issues of fate and faith vs.
unpredictability and doubt, love of family vs. emotional escape into
loneliness and the clinical vs. the beautiful. Amid all of that, fans of
the relationship between Scully and Mulder (David Duchovny) are in for a
tasty treat. There's even a visit of sorts from God.
"One of the concepts I wanted to imbue the script with is the idea that we
are guided, in a sense, through our lives," Anderson says during a
conversation from her "X-Files" trailer on the Fox lot in Hollywood. "There
are reasons for so-called coincidences."
"That was the initial concept behind the script," she says, "and it's hard
to say where all the other aspects of it came into being, from Scully's
relationship with a man from her past to the man's relationship with his
daughter."
"I can't even say how those came up," she concludes. "I don't know I just
don't know."