The truth is out there.
David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson weren’t best buds on the set of “The X-Files, ” but now they’re mending fences and opening up about their relationship.
The former co-stars reunite for Tuesday’s upcoming episode of Duchovny’s “Fail Better” podcast.
“We know each other very deeply and yet we don’t know each other either in some weird way,” said Duchovny, 64, per People.
“I don’t know that we ever sat down and said, ‘Hey, what was your childhood like?’”
Anderson, 56, recalled, “We didn’t. And why would we? We were busy.”
Duchovny starred as the open-minded special agent Mulder, while Anderson played the more skeptical special agent Scully on the hit Fox show from 1993 to 2002. They both also reprised their roles in two films and revival seasons in 2016 and 2018.
“The Crown” actress added, “We have a closeness that we don’t have with probably many other people, and went through something that we didn’t go through with any other people. I mean, yes, there were crew and etcetera, but in terms of our experience as actors. And so, I thought it would be a curious investigation.”
Duchovny has two kids — West, 25, and Kyd, 22 — with his ex-wife, actress Tea Leoni, who he divorced in 2014. Anderson — who has three kids from previous relationships — started dating “The Crown” creator Peter Morgan in 2016. They recently sparked reconciliation rumors after breaking up in 2020.
Duchovny confessed that he thought the “trickiest” part of their conversation would be addressing what he described as his “failure of friendship.”
“There was a long time, working on the show, where we were just not even dealing with one another off-camera,” Duchovny recalled.
“And there was a lot of tension. Which didn’t matter, apparently, for the work cause we’re both f–king crazy, I guess. We could just go out there and do what we needed to do.”
Scully and Mulder eventually got romantic on the show, even as the actors confessed that they barely talked in real life.
“That is kinda crazy,” Anderson agreed. “I mean, it’s crazy that we were able to present on camera, you know, the various feelings and emotions and attraction and all that kind of stuff, but then not speak to each other for weeks at a time.”
Duchovny suggested that it may have been a smart choice.
“Cause we’re, like, savin’ it up. I don’t know,” he said. “But I could’ve handled myself better, you know? And as you know, we went through a crazy-making kind of a process with this thing.”
He added, “We went from — I mean, I was pretty inexperienced. You were really inexperienced. And all of a sudden … It was like a global phenomenon before the Internet. And we’re just scurrying, trying to figure out who we are.”
But, they’ve moved on. Duchovny told People that he and Anderson are like “family.”
“When you share a seminal kind of experience in your life — this huge success with the show that we had — only we know what it’s like to be in the center of that,” he said.
“It’s almost like being in the same family. We know what it was like to be raised in that time. There’s a certain kind of shared experience, knowledge, and past that never goes away.”
