•i only had half a cream cheese bagel•

<-THE INITIAL RELEASE->

January 1996: Much to the crowds delight the next girl told her that she had the "greatest hair" (so there, TV Guide!) She also asked if she'd made any films ("a few very small ones that never even made it to video"). She wants to do something over the next hiatus. The next girl asked about "what was it like to do that Rolling Stone picture with David[?]" To which Gillain replied, "She means what was it like to have my naked breast against his chest," then proceeded to tease the cheering crowd with, "It was fun! David's got very soft skin. He's very fit. And we had a very hard time that day...it... it was work."

March 16, 1996: When asked to comment on the naughty photos of her appearing in Rolling Stone and FHM, GA said she thought the RS photo was "classy" and "risqué". She said the intention with these pix was to get away from the "Scully suit image". She said "now it's over, I've done my dirty deeds."

Also, pictured below: She pointed out Chris Carter has a bandaid on his finger in the RS pix.

<-ROLLING STONE: U.S. RELEASE->

May 13, 1996: In numerous interviews, [Carter] has stated that there will be a relationship between the two main characters “when hell freezes over,” as he recently said in USA Today.

Still, that doesn’t preclude the stars posing for provocative magazine covers. There were Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, who portrays Scully, posing bare-chested in bed on the cover of Rolling Stone. TV Guide recently had the two in a series of photographic clinches.

What gives?

“For me, it was a conscious choice as an actress to get away from the stereotype of Scully,” Anderson says, of her departure from the smart, tough and oh-so-serious forensic pathologist Scully. “I wanted to show that I had other sides to me.”

May 16, 1996: Q: I’ve heard you and Gillian don’t socialize much.

DD: No, we never do. We spend enough time together.

Q: What did you think of posing in bed together?

DD: I thought the photos were great. And I thought that Chris Carter grooms his chest hair.

[...]

Q: How do you explain the celibate sexual heat between them?

CC: I’m adamant about not putting them in a romantic situation. Their passion would be directed toward each other, and all the aliens, mutants, and other ghosts and ghoulies would run amok. But when you have two smart people who are passionate about what they do and happen to be physically attractive, you get sexual heat. Fox is very respectful and protective of Scully. He’s gentle with her and playful, and people take it as flirtation.

Q: So then what do you make of our cover shot?

CC: That’s David and Gillian in bed, not Mulder and Scully.

[...]

Q: Have you and David made a lot of public appearances together?

GA: We did at the beginning. Then the object was to individualize us a bit.

Q: Oh, so you are two different people?

GA: We are! [...]

Q: How do you assess David’s appeal?

GA: Obviously, the audience is only seeing his character, who’s incredibly intelligent, kind, charming and sensitive. He’s like the perfect romantic hero. And a lot of that is also David. He brings such a warmth and intelligence to the role and a smooth sexuality that I don’t think anybody in their right mind could not find him attractive.

Q: There’s a certain powerful sexuality in your characters’ interaction even though you don’t do it.

GA: We don’t do it?

Q: You don’t have sex. Except on our cover. Was it good for you, by the way?

GA: They just happened to show up in our hotel room. Was it good for me? Yes. I think what makes the relationship between Scully and Mulder sexy is the respect they have for one another. They don’t manipulate or take advantage of one another. I’m sure that’s very intriguing for the audience.

Q: Sometimes it feels like a relationship out of a ’40s movie.

GA: It’s that tension. We’ve done some incredibly intimate scenes that have nothing to do with sex. Beginnings of relationships are always the most exciting — that period when you’re courting and you get near each other and start breathing heavily. The hottest stuff is before you ever touch the other person. Or the first touch. So Mulder and Scully’s first touch in an episode or first touch in many episodes becomes more exciting.

<-AFTER THE FACT->

1996: GA: "They caught us in the trailer. And somebody took a picture and it shouldn't even be on the cover."

June 30, 1996: Lawrie "The Australian edition of Rolling Stone had that now very famous - internationally famous - portrait of you and David Duchovny in bed together on the front cover. What do you think about that photo?"

Gillian: "Well, I thought it was a lot of fun, it was ... kind of a statement we were making against the talk of the characters getting together and I think that...I think that ... we had a lot of fun doing it, it was a very risky shot for us to do and it turned out incredibly well - I think it was a very great photograph that they've come up with, and so I think we're all very proud of it."

July 17, 1996: KRISTINA: You and David Duchovny were recently proclaimed the "sexy stars of The X-Files" on the cover of a magazine. What is your reaction?

GILLIAN: I have a slightly different view. I think that what the audience finds appealing and downright intriguing is the platonic but sexually tense relationship between my character and David's character. It leaves a lot to the imagination.

September 1996: [Tom pulls out a copy of the Australian Rolling Stone]

TOM: Uh... cause one of the things that Chris Cater talks about all the time is... if Mulder and Scully get it on...the show would change.

GILLIAN: Get it on.... uh, would you explain for the kids that are watching? Get it on.

TOM: Uh, well, you know... a really special friend.

GILLIAN: I see, okay...

TOM: Yeah... look at this. [holding magazine]

LAURIE: Yeah, that came out in Australia and that picture appeared in some magazine in the States.

GILLIAN: No, that also came out in the American one.

TOM: So that came out here as well? Rolling Stone...

GILLIAN: Yeah, but you have to see the picture on the inside.... because that's where Chris Carter joins us in bed! [laughs]

TOM: Oh, is that in there?

GILLIAN: Uh huh, on the inside page.

BOB THE PUPPET: Uh huh, so the truth is in there [GA reaches for the mag]

GILLIAN: May I? [starts flipping through the magazine] you can see what Chris Carter looks like.. he's the main man, and here he is in all his glory [GA holds the picture up for everyone to see] uh, there we go, that's Chris Cater.... right there with a band aid on his finger.

Fall-Winter 1996: The casting of her co-star David Duchovny, 36, as "Spooky" Fox Mulder was another lucky break for both Gillian and The X-Files. The two immediately hit it off and developed an on-screen sexual chemistry that as made the dark, edgy show such a success.

Their closeness has led to wild rumours they're more than just good friends. The gossip machine went into overdrive when the couple posed in bed together for some steamy publicity pictures which appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. But happily married Gillian roars with laughter at any suggestion of romance with David.

"It was a photo shoot!" she hoots. "It was just part of her job in promoting the show. I think that if there was anything between us, we wouldn't have done the cover in the first place!

"It was just something that was thought up and agreed to by us because it sounded like it would make a great cover and the photographs ended up being very risque and beautiful, and we loved them. Scully is so strait-laced that it was refreshing to do something different. But that's all it was. It was a photo shoot!" she howls again.

December 16, 1996: JAY: Well let me ask you about - now you are on more magazine covers - and these wonderful sort of - half-naked magazine covers - (Gillian puts her head in her hand in mock embarrassment. Jay holds up three magazines - the British Esquire from this month with Gillian standing up, no shirt on, wearing long black gloves, her arms crossed over her chest and forming an "X" [...]; the Rolling Stone with David and Gillian in bed, covered by the sheets from the waist down and naked from the waist up - Gillian is turned over so you can't see her breasts [...]; and one more that I can't see. He puts them all back behind the desk quickly except for the Rolling Stone.) And this Rolling Stone - Now let me ask you about this picture - because I got this issue - uh - uh - (holds up the RS - close-up on it - audience "whoo"s)

GILLIAN: See I'm doing - I'm doing this thing with my nails (the tapping thing) when you were doing that...That's what they're for.

JAY: Now are you g - now - what is going on below - the sheet part here? (points to cover of RS)

GILLIAN: (smiling) Uh -

JAY: Are you guys dressed for this part or -

GILLIAN: Yeah, we are - I - I had um - I - we both had underwear on...we both had...briefs on.

JAY: Briefs?

GILLIAN: Well - you know - like I had those little - what are they called, those um -

JAY: Oh, describe them as *best* you can.

GILLIAN: Those - yeah. (laughs, so does audience) Those little - you know, those silk women's under - what are they *called*? (looks at audience) What - N - Yeah, they're like silk boxers for women -

JAY: (to audience) No - Don't make it any easier for her! Please. (Gillian laughs)

GILLIAN: And - and he had some silk boxers on, and it was... It was fun, it was a fun shoot, it was, uh - you know because everybody's always asking are we [M/S] ever gonna be in bed together, and - and we're not, ever on the show, I don't think, but it was kind of like a - a tease, for the audience, in a way.

January 1997: Yet one of the most entertaining responses to her decision to do the sexiest shoot of her career came from a highly unlikely source.

"Let me read you what my grandmother wrote to me," she says. "'Dear Gillian, I was very, very sorry to hear that you've run out of clothing. Maybe I should send you some money so you can buy a dress or two. I am going to plant a couple of fig trees so that in the future we will have plenty of fig leaves to cover you if you ever run out of clothing again. Loving you very much, but wondering why you stripped...'"

May 13, 1997: LORRAINE: Much is made obviously of the chemistry between the two of you, but if you ever did get together, on screen I should say, it would ruin it wouldn't it?

GILLIAN: Yeah.

LORRAINE: Yeah it would...

GILLIAN: It would..

LORRAINE: ...It would definitely would, it wouldn't be the same, it think the fact that they sometimes just nearly, you can see sometimes that they just maybe just going to have a cuddle. There you are look , you *did* have a cuddle on the front of "Rolling Stone" magazine mind you.

(A picture of the front cover from the Australian Rolling Stone magazine is shown on screen - showing Mulder and Scully together in bed cuddling one-another)

LORRAINE: ... What a very sexy picture that is. What was that done for? Just a kind of ?

GILLIAN: It was done for the cover of Austrailian Rolling Stone originally, and then it went to the American Rolling Stone cover.

LORRAINE: Oh right...

GILLIAN: And er. It was a lot of fun.

LORRAINE: That was good. I mean you obviously have to get on well

GILLIAN: (Laughs)

LORRAINE: ...You have to get on well. If you're working with somebody so intensely you have to get on well. How do you manage to do that?

GILLIAN: Umm. We stay out of each others way - You know. We are thrown together in a situation which is unlikely, and under an incredible amount of stress, in the hours that we have to work and stuff. So, being essentially married which it feels like sometimes, with somebody that you see - you know, 16 hours a day can get a bit tedious.

-IN RETROSPECT-

April 18, 1998: Anderson takes the magazine covers in stride.

"It's never been weird, I think, because I really don't take it that seriously. It's just something that you do. It's part of the process of growing into the world of business.

"Often it has absolutely nothing to do with who you are. But it kind of puts you in people's faces, so that people might actually go to see something you're in because of something you might have said that inspired them in some way. It gets you out there in different ways. But that's all it is, really."

May 9, 1998: Man: I have a silly question. I was wondering this for the longest time. I wanted to know if you and David were actually naked together on the cover of Rolling Stone.

*Audience laughs and cheers*

Gillian: Well, as I recall

(*someone yells, "Tell the truth!"*)

Gillian:...he had some black satin boxer shorts on

(*more cheering from audience - Gillian is laughing*)

Gillian: I mean, it was a technical thing. I just have to preface this by saying it was a technical thing. I had like...I don't even know how to describe this thing...like, you know, those little tap pants. Those little like, tan tap pants, you know....yeah...and like a negligee kind of top thing. But, when I laid sideways on his chest, ummm...it didn't quite look right with the little bit of black so...we kinda had to pull it down, so...I did have my naked breast on his naked chest.

(*audience goes wild*)

Gillian: But ummm....from here, you know, down to here we were clothed (laughing)! Okay.

Man: Thanks!

Gillian: You're welcome! [...]

*More questions are yelled out from the audience*

Gillian: I don't think so! Oh, come on!! The question was: Would I marry David Duchovny if he wasn't married to Tea Leoni?! All right, how many people would want that to happen, SERIOUSLY?

(*some cheering and groaning from the audience*)

Gillian: And how many people would like....Okay, I've done this wrong! I'm actually curious by this - How many people would REALLY be interested in seeing that happen? Okay...all right...there you go. But you know, if Mulder and Scully got together, that's okay....

(*audience cheers loudly*)

Gillian: Okay[.]

September 27, 2000: I tell her what worried me most were the undraped photo-shoots she started doing for British men's magazines such as FHM. She recalls them hazily as part of a time when she had little clue what she was doing. "But there was also a part of me that needed to show another side of myself. I had been living in this dumpy land."

January 12, 2003: S: If that is how you feel, why was it then that you did some quite provocative pictures earlier on. We are not talking centerfold Playboy...

G: No, no, no. We are not talking about that. Well, it was a couple of things. In the first season, I got pregnant. When that was done, it was a conscious effort for me to say, "Okay, there is another side to me. I am not just this dowdy..." There was that. And there was also, I have to admit, an aspect of no forethought and I look at these pictures now - people hand them to me outside the stage door - and I am just, "Oh...!" I mean, absolutely dreadful.

December 28, 2015: Of course, the question we had been unconsciously skirting was the obvious one. To say that Anderson’s relationship with Duchovny had been well documented would imply that everything reported about them was true, and given how contradictory it was, that seems unlikely. They were said to be lovers; they were said to hate each other; there was chemistry or there was pure acid. Suffice it to say that a great deal of attention has been paid, over the years, to their pairing. The onscreen-­offscreen slippage was, surely, intentional — their frisson fueled the show, and they knew it. In 1996, Anderson and Duchovny appeared locked in an embrace on the cover of Rolling Stone, lying in bed together naked.

BONUS

(Credit to: mylifeonxfiles)

A David Duchovny mention--

April 17, 2005: Duchovny's life changed dramatically in 1993 when he signed on to play Fox Mulder on "The X-Files." By the end of its first season, the series was regularly drawing 17 million viewers a week. "We became rock stars," he says. "I remember I couldn't believe I was on the cover of Rolling Stone. It was so hip. I'd never been that hip before in my life."

The success of "The X-Files" came with a price. Fourteen-hour days on the Vancouver set left Duchovny and co-star Gillian Anderson feeling perpetually burned out. Almost immediately, rumors began flying that the duo hated each other. "That was all overplayed," he says. "We had our differences but that happens with any two people who are thrown together for 14-hour days to work on a cultural phenomenon. We've spoken recently, and we're in touch by e-mail, because Gillian spends a lot of time in London these days."

CONCLUSION

And there you have it.

Gillian Anderson's Favorite Joke (and Getting David Duchovny On Board)

1995 Gillian Anderson: Trolling about Her and David Duchovny

1997 David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson: "Best of Acquaintances"

1998 Gillian Anderson Debunks Rumors about Herself, DD, and Tea

2000 DD and GA Interview Each Other: "Roots of a Tree"

2008 DD and GA: "Trying to Pick Me Up" Jokes

2013 DD: "We Don't Live Together," the Explanation

2016 Gillian Anderson and Fans' Expectations

2024 DD and GA Talk About Their X-Files Trauma

The Evolution of Gillian Anderson's Friendship with David Duchovny

DD and GA Discussing the Former Strain in Their Relationship

DD and GA's Friendship: the Tense Times (a Brief History)

Thanks for reading~