My Encyclopedia of My X-Files Fic Lists, Analyses, Fan Vids, and Fan Fiction Resources
So, I pushed all my little anthills into one dust pile because I got sick and tired of having to manually search through my colonies to find that ONE drone.
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I don't go here anymore, but I just saw David Duchovny is going to be a guest on Hot Ones on June 25th and I don't think anyone has broken the news to TXF Tumblr yet
Just saw it, too!
That's right up my alley and I'm excited. Thank you for spreading the news, anon!
listen idk if anyone’s noticed this but before the Millennium kiss Mulder makes *direct eye contact* with the camera like he’s on the Office. and I. added a zoom/shaky camera effect so u could see…..liek literally..
Gillian Anderson's Favorite Joke
(and Getting David Duchovny On Board)
(Credit to: @f1esbian, full set here)
A short timeline of GA enjoying her little jokes (and including DD when he was ready.)
tl;dr at the bottom.
THE 90s: GA AMUSED, DD HURT
-THE JOKE-
February 9, 1995:
Anderson scoffs at rumors of a romance with Duchovny. "I love rumors that have no basis in reality that are funny," she says with a smile. "[They're] not hurting anybody." Duchovny, whose two-year relationship with actress Perrey Reeves ended only a few months ago, is less enchanted. "I think gossip is hurtful," he says, before turning blase. "You know, it doesn't matter to me."
May 13, 1996:
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.
May 1996:
GA [discussing The Rolling Stone cover]: They caught us in the trailer. And somebody took a picture and it shouldn't even be on the cover.
-THE BOTTOM LINE-
Late 1996:
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 his 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.
April 14, 2000:
GA: “Not many people are willing to see the middle ground. They either want to think we're madly in love or hating each other. But it's neither of those things. It's magical and difficult, and wondrous and painful, and frustrating and joyous, as any intense, intimate relationship is.”
IWTB ERA: DD CAN JOKE NOW
-THE JOKE-
July 22, 2008:
Question: What do you think the secret is to your chemistry when you two plays these characters as actors?
Anderson: We’ve actually been having a fifteen year affair.
July (29?) 2008:
Q: Chemistry is hard! How did you guys come, how did you guys do it again?
DD: You know, it's just, it's... we're just lucky, I think, as actors to play well off one another. And it's kind of been that way from the beginning when, when I, when we were waiting to go in and read for the network. Uh, I forget, did I come up to you [addressing Gillian]? I mean, I just, we just started running lines with one another-- [GA: Mm hm.] --before we went in there, so--
GA: You were trying to pick me up.
DD: [Pauses, looks up] ...Was I?
GA: [Laughs.]
DD: Was I?
GA: [Laughing] I don't know.
DD: Do you think I was?
GA: [Hands up] No, no, no, I didn't say that! But, um....
DD: [Mock exaggerated] I, I never! [GA: Laughs.]
GA: No.
2008:
[Cutaway after CC's remark: "Yeah, we had as much fun, uh, pretending what this movie wasn't than what this movie was."]
DD: We’re having a baby.
Interviewer [points to GA]: Congratulations!
GA: Thank you.
Interviewer: Is it going to be an alien child?
DD: Yes.
GA: Uh, yes it is.
DD: Half English.
-THE BOTTOM LINE-
April 16, 2008:
Shock: What’s that like with David now that you’re not with each other 16 hours a day on a series?
Anderson: It’s great, but it was great then, too. This is like a sibling relationship and I never had siblings. I had brothers and sisters that started when I was 13, so I was out of the house and didn’t have that experience. There was always this love/hate – hate is too big of a word – but there was always something. It was a natural relationship over a period of time. Now we’ve grown up and we’re older, we’re more appreciative of the relationship period and the unique experience we had together and have an opportunity to continue that and foster it. We’ve always loved each other and we’re always going to be a battle sometimes.
PRE-REVIVAL ERA: MAKING LIGHT OF HARD TIMES
The Infamous 2012 Gillovny Rumors, i.e. "living together" hilarity--
August 17, 2012:
The New York native laughed off talk that he and his “The X-Files” co-star, Gillian Anderson are living together. “Gillian and I have been trading e-mails,” he volunteered. “Very funny. I wish I could show the thread where I wrote, ‘I’m very sorry for leaving the toilet seat up. I didn’t know you were living with me. Where are you exactly in the house?’ I just haven’t found her yet. So, it’s not true.”
October 8, 2012:
Gossip site Celebrity Dirty Laundry claimed in the summer that the pair had been in a “serious relationship” for some time, after Anderson split from partner Mark Griffiths.
Duchovny’s representative denied the rumours at the time, but Anderson confirmed in an interview with the Guardian that the pair were never romantically involved.
The 44-year-old said: “No, there wasn’t any truth in that. I was enjoying the ludicracy [sic] of it for a while, but then he started denying it publicly and so I lost all my enjoyment of it.”
When told that she had potentially broken the hearts of X-Files fans who had always hoped for their characters Mulder and Scully to get together, she replied “I know”, then joked: “I emailed him at one point and said: ‘You left the toilet seat up again’.”
February 28, 2013:
David Duchovny is an open book when you ask him a highly personal question: Why is it that the gossip always had him feuding with his TV co-star Gillian Anderson?
“You tell me why,” Duchovny says with a laugh during a phone interview from his New York home. “We’re great friends. In fact, last year the tabloids had us living together, so maybe we turned the corner.
“Some guy passed me on the streets the other day and actually said, ‘Is it true? Are you living with Gillian?’ I said, ‘If I am, she’s extremely quiet, because I haven’t noticed her just yet.’”
July 2013:
Perhaps her most famous on-screen partnership was with The X-Files’ David Duchovny, an actor slightly overshadowed by her own success. Does she ever see him? “Er, yeah, from time to time,” she says a little too brightly. “We’re doing a photoshoot for the cover of Entertainment Weekly this weekend in LA, for the show’s twentieth anniversary. When we’re in the same city we try and hook up. You know there was that rumour for a while that we were in a relationship? And that we were moving into an apartment together! I can honestly say that wasn’t the case.”
October 16, 2013:
OKTV: The two of you look so cute together, by the way. I love the way you’re embracing each other. It’s so nice to see each other again, isn’t it?
Duchovny: It is. I love seeing Gillian. We don't live together, however. We've never been married, however.
Anderson: [Laughs]
March 15, 2014:
GA: I think we know each other too well. I think we probably know each other better than we know our spouses. At any time that we might have had spouses.
Interviewer: Mhm.
GA: Yeah.
Interviewer: So there's, like, there couldn't be any attraction there because of that it's just--
GA: It's not that there might not be attraction. There's a friend that, you know, there is an attraction. There's an attraction.
Interviewer: Friend-attraction.
GA: Yeah, Maybe there might even be more than an attraction. But it's not going to happen.
Interviewer: Right.
GA: And it is that frisson that has made it interesting in the series; and continues to make it interesting. But, you know-- [flips hair.]
[Sidenote: DD responded a year later here.]
October 15, 2014:
[–]MuldersStarbuck
Gill, have you ever heard David Duchovny sing? We're eagerly waiting for his album!
[–]gillianandersonGillian Anderson
Yes I have.
He didn't invite me to do a duet.
May 28, 2015 (x):
You’re known for working in duos, so how was working with Gray Davis on this - any similarities between him and Scully?
DD: Well, Gray is attractive as well and is a good deal taller than Gillian.
Do you and Gillian keep in touch?
DD: Yeah, we live together (laughs).
-THE BOTTOM LINE-
October 2, 2014:
Despite rumours, and the will of a million Mulder and Scully fans, she is not dating her co-star of old, David Duchovny, and is currently single.
November 3, 2014:
“I’ve had a very blessed life.... I mean, around the ending of the last relationship and my brother’s death, it was a very, very tough year and a half, but on the whole, other than that, if you’re talking about since the last time I saw you, I’ve had an extraordinary life.”
REVIVAL ERA: SHENANIGANS MOST UNSERIOUS
Revival Twitter shenanigans between 2015-2018 (here and here and here and etc.)
December 9, 2015:
Q: can you describe @davidduchovny in 3 words to us?
GA: Funny, smart, sexy.
January 23, 2016:
Q: Did you talk at all before you got here, gear up for the return?
Anderson: No, I wouldn’t say “gearing-up.” We have an ongoing relationship that’s mostly based on logistics, mostly based in email.
Duchovny: We’re not living together?
Anderson: We email each other across the road.
-THE BOTTOM LINE-
January 14, 2016:
Mulder and Scully, Duchovny and Anderson, were and still are in many minds one of the most compelling on-screen partnerships. Rumors of rifts and romances abounded about their off-screen relationship, too, with little foundation. But Anderson isn’t concerned about a repeat of such gossip, despite acknowledging the chemistry between them. “People know we are good friends now and that we’ve found our way into an adult friendship. But there is something that will always remain between us; a kinetic energy that is tangible when you see us in a room together. So, no matter what’s happening, if I’m at his concert or we’re having a meal together, people love adding that to the excitement of their obsessions.”
February 13, 2016:
Great swathes of the gossiping internet have long hoped that a real life relationship might follow on the heels of the tense sexual dynamic between Mulder and Scully; and the same swathes of the internet went positively wild with excitement when photos surfaced this year showing the couple sharing a kiss on stage, or relaxing on a bed with X-Files merchandise.
People who want to read more into that closeness, however should "know there's nothing to it" says Anderson. "It's a game." She shifts in her seat, and fixes me with a cool gaze. Does she really think people believe that? Plenty, as a quick Google search reveals, seem absolutely convinced that there's more to it. "Does he live in London?" she snaps back. "Does David live in London?" Not to my knowledge I say, but were they ever romantically involved? "Nope," she replies crisply. "Is that going to be the headline of this interview?"
Clearly not.
[Sidenote: it was.]
January 13, 2018:
GA: It’s funny because I was doing an interview this morning and I realized that we are close but we’re not close. The interviewer had said to me that I had once said that we were closer than any marriage or any relationship that I had ever been in. And actually I clarified it to say actually that it’s more that we’ve spent more time together than any other relationship, it’s not necessarily that we are close. Very often when you’re working these long hours you may have a little bit of chit-chat between scenes but you’re not really standing around talking about personal lives necessarily or very often you don’t have meals either at work or outside of work together because you’re in each other’s company all the time. So I actually don’t know very much about David Duchovny, (laughter) but we love each other, we are very good together and we appreciate and respect each other. But you could ask me, probably 9 out of 10 things you could ask me about him I would get wrong.
February 3, 2018:
Off the show, however, Anderson says their relationship is purely professional. “We get along well but in our daily communication, there’s no intimacy. We don’t see each other. Our kids have never met each other.”
TL;DR: IN A NUTSHELL
April 14, 2000:
GA: “Not many people are willing to see the middle ground. They either want to think we're madly in love or hating each other. But it's neither of those things. It's magical and difficult, and wondrous and painful, and frustrating and joyous, as any intense, intimate relationship is.”
January 19, 2016:
“The way we work together has changed,” he adds. “Whatever rapport we have as actors, we earned. It’s nice to be able to play that without ever even feeling like you’re playing it.”
February 13, 2016:
People who want to read more into that closeness, however should "know there's nothing to it" says Anderson. "It's a game."
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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Anya is LIVE right now
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go on vacation. wear a tshirt for the first time in months. receive 50+ calls from the co-worker you cruelly abandoned for two days. take a bath. deflect marriage proposal. eat a lobster. microwave evil doll. back to work
Gillian Anderson's Favorite Joke
(and Getting David Duchovny On Board)
(Credit to: @f1esbian, full set here)
A short timeline of GA enjoying her little jokes (and including DD when he was ready.)
tl;dr at the bottom.
THE 90s: GA AMUSED, DD HURT
-THE JOKE-
February 9, 1995:
Anderson scoffs at rumors of a romance with Duchovny. "I love rumors that have no basis in reality that are funny," she says with a smile. "[They're] not hurting anybody." Duchovny, whose two-year relationship with actress Perrey Reeves ended only a few months ago, is less enchanted. "I think gossip is hurtful," he says, before turning blase. "You know, it doesn't matter to me."
May 13, 1996:
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.
May 1996:
GA [discussing The Rolling Stone cover]: They caught us in the trailer. And somebody took a picture and it shouldn't even be on the cover.
-THE BOTTOM LINE-
Late 1996:
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 his 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.
April 14, 2000:
GA: “Not many people are willing to see the middle ground. They either want to think we're madly in love or hating each other. But it's neither of those things. It's magical and difficult, and wondrous and painful, and frustrating and joyous, as any intense, intimate relationship is.”
IWTB ERA: DD CAN JOKE NOW
-THE JOKE-
July 22, 2008:
Question: What do you think the secret is to your chemistry when you two plays these characters as actors?
Anderson: We’ve actually been having a fifteen year affair.
July (29?) 2008:
Q: Chemistry is hard! How did you guys come, how did you guys do it again?
DD: You know, it's just, it's... we're just lucky, I think, as actors to play well off one another. And it's kind of been that way from the beginning when, when I, when we were waiting to go in and read for the network. Uh, I forget, did I come up to you [addressing Gillian]? I mean, I just, we just started running lines with one another-- [GA: Mm hm.] --before we went in there, so--
GA: You were trying to pick me up.
DD: [Pauses, looks up] ...Was I?
GA: [Laughs.]
DD: Was I?
GA: [Laughing] I don't know.
DD: Do you think I was?
GA: [Hands up] No, no, no, I didn't say that! But, um....
DD: [Mock exaggerated] I, I never! [GA: Laughs.]
GA: No.
2008:
[Cutaway after CC's remark: "Yeah, we had as much fun, uh, pretending what this movie wasn't than what this movie was."]
DD: We’re having a baby.
Interviewer [points to GA]: Congratulations!
GA: Thank you.
Interviewer: Is it going to be an alien child?
DD: Yes.
GA: Uh, yes it is.
DD: Half English.
-THE BOTTOM LINE-
April 16, 2008:
Shock: What’s that like with David now that you’re not with each other 16 hours a day on a series?
Anderson: It’s great, but it was great then, too. This is like a sibling relationship and I never had siblings. I had brothers and sisters that started when I was 13, so I was out of the house and didn’t have that experience. There was always this love/hate – hate is too big of a word – but there was always something. It was a natural relationship over a period of time. Now we’ve grown up and we’re older, we’re more appreciative of the relationship period and the unique experience we had together and have an opportunity to continue that and foster it. We’ve always loved each other and we’re always going to be a battle sometimes.
PRE-REVIVAL ERA: MAKING LIGHT OF HARD TIMES
The Infamous 2012 Gillovny Rumors, i.e. "living together" hilarity--
August 17, 2012:
The New York native laughed off talk that he and his “The X-Files” co-star, Gillian Anderson are living together. “Gillian and I have been trading e-mails,” he volunteered. “Very funny. I wish I could show the thread where I wrote, ‘I’m very sorry for leaving the toilet seat up. I didn’t know you were living with me. Where are you exactly in the house?’ I just haven’t found her yet. So, it’s not true.”
October 8, 2012:
Gossip site Celebrity Dirty Laundry claimed in the summer that the pair had been in a “serious relationship” for some time, after Anderson split from partner Mark Griffiths.
Duchovny’s representative denied the rumours at the time, but Anderson confirmed in an interview with the Guardian that the pair were never romantically involved.
The 44-year-old said: “No, there wasn’t any truth in that. I was enjoying the ludicracy [sic] of it for a while, but then he started denying it publicly and so I lost all my enjoyment of it.”
When told that she had potentially broken the hearts of X-Files fans who had always hoped for their characters Mulder and Scully to get together, she replied “I know”, then joked: “I emailed him at one point and said: ‘You left the toilet seat up again’.”
February 28, 2013:
David Duchovny is an open book when you ask him a highly personal question: Why is it that the gossip always had him feuding with his TV co-star Gillian Anderson?
“You tell me why,” Duchovny says with a laugh during a phone interview from his New York home. “We’re great friends. In fact, last year the tabloids had us living together, so maybe we turned the corner.
“Some guy passed me on the streets the other day and actually said, ‘Is it true? Are you living with Gillian?’ I said, ‘If I am, she’s extremely quiet, because I haven’t noticed her just yet.’”
July 2013:
Perhaps her most famous on-screen partnership was with The X-Files’ David Duchovny, an actor slightly overshadowed by her own success. Does she ever see him? “Er, yeah, from time to time,” she says a little too brightly. “We’re doing a photoshoot for the cover of Entertainment Weekly this weekend in LA, for the show’s twentieth anniversary. When we’re in the same city we try and hook up. You know there was that rumour for a while that we were in a relationship? And that we were moving into an apartment together! I can honestly say that wasn’t the case.”
October 16, 2013:
OKTV: The two of you look so cute together, by the way. I love the way you’re embracing each other. It’s so nice to see each other again, isn’t it?
Duchovny: It is. I love seeing Gillian. We don't live together, however. We've never been married, however.
Anderson: [Laughs]
March 15, 2014:
GA: I think we know each other too well. I think we probably know each other better than we know our spouses. At any time that we might have had spouses.
Interviewer: Mhm.
GA: Yeah.
Interviewer: So there's, like, there couldn't be any attraction there because of that it's just--
GA: It's not that there might not be attraction. There's a friend that, you know, there is an attraction. There's an attraction.
Interviewer: Friend-attraction.
GA: Yeah, Maybe there might even be more than an attraction. But it's not going to happen.
Interviewer: Right.
GA: And it is that frisson that has made it interesting in the series; and continues to make it interesting. But, you know-- [flips hair.]
[Sidenote: DD responded a year later here.]
October 15, 2014:
[–]MuldersStarbuck
Gill, have you ever heard David Duchovny sing? We're eagerly waiting for his album!
[–]gillianandersonGillian Anderson
Yes I have.
He didn't invite me to do a duet.
May 28, 2015 (x):
You’re known for working in duos, so how was working with Gray Davis on this - any similarities between him and Scully?
DD: Well, Gray is attractive as well and is a good deal taller than Gillian.
Do you and Gillian keep in touch?
DD: Yeah, we live together (laughs).
-THE BOTTOM LINE-
October 2, 2014:
Despite rumours, and the will of a million Mulder and Scully fans, she is not dating her co-star of old, David Duchovny, and is currently single.
November 3, 2014:
“I’ve had a very blessed life.... I mean, around the ending of the last relationship and my brother’s death, it was a very, very tough year and a half, but on the whole, other than that, if you’re talking about since the last time I saw you, I’ve had an extraordinary life.”
REVIVAL ERA: SHENANIGANS MOST UNSERIOUS
Revival Twitter shenanigans between 2015-2018 (here and here and here and etc.)
December 9, 2015:
Q: can you describe @davidduchovny in 3 words to us?
GA: Funny, smart, sexy.
January 23, 2016:
Q: Did you talk at all before you got here, gear up for the return?
Anderson: No, I wouldn’t say “gearing-up.” We have an ongoing relationship that’s mostly based on logistics, mostly based in email.
Duchovny: We’re not living together?
Anderson: We email each other across the road.
-THE BOTTOM LINE-
January 14, 2016:
Mulder and Scully, Duchovny and Anderson, were and still are in many minds one of the most compelling on-screen partnerships. Rumors of rifts and romances abounded about their off-screen relationship, too, with little foundation. But Anderson isn’t concerned about a repeat of such gossip, despite acknowledging the chemistry between them. “People know we are good friends now and that we’ve found our way into an adult friendship. But there is something that will always remain between us; a kinetic energy that is tangible when you see us in a room together. So, no matter what’s happening, if I’m at his concert or we’re having a meal together, people love adding that to the excitement of their obsessions.”
February 13, 2016:
Great swathes of the gossiping internet have long hoped that a real life relationship might follow on the heels of the tense sexual dynamic between Mulder and Scully; and the same swathes of the internet went positively wild with excitement when photos surfaced this year showing the couple sharing a kiss on stage, or relaxing on a bed with X-Files merchandise.
People who want to read more into that closeness, however should "know there's nothing to it" says Anderson. "It's a game." She shifts in her seat, and fixes me with a cool gaze. Does she really think people believe that? Plenty, as a quick Google search reveals, seem absolutely convinced that there's more to it. "Does he live in London?" she snaps back. "Does David live in London?" Not to my knowledge I say, but were they ever romantically involved? "Nope," she replies crisply. "Is that going to be the headline of this interview?"
Clearly not.
[Sidenote: it was.]
January 13, 2018:
GA: It’s funny because I was doing an interview this morning and I realized that we are close but we’re not close. The interviewer had said to me that I had once said that we were closer than any marriage or any relationship that I had ever been in. And actually I clarified it to say actually that it’s more that we’ve spent more time together than any other relationship, it’s not necessarily that we are close. Very often when you’re working these long hours you may have a little bit of chit-chat between scenes but you’re not really standing around talking about personal lives necessarily or very often you don’t have meals either at work or outside of work together because you’re in each other’s company all the time. So I actually don’t know very much about David Duchovny, (laughter) but we love each other, we are very good together and we appreciate and respect each other. But you could ask me, probably 9 out of 10 things you could ask me about him I would get wrong.
February 3, 2018:
Off the show, however, Anderson says their relationship is purely professional. “We get along well but in our daily communication, there’s no intimacy. We don’t see each other. Our kids have never met each other.”
TL;DR: IN A NUTSHELL
April 14, 2000:
GA: “Not many people are willing to see the middle ground. They either want to think we're madly in love or hating each other. But it's neither of those things. It's magical and difficult, and wondrous and painful, and frustrating and joyous, as any intense, intimate relationship is.”
January 19, 2016:
“The way we work together has changed,” he adds. “Whatever rapport we have as actors, we earned. It’s nice to be able to play that without ever even feeling like you’re playing it.”
February 13, 2016:
People who want to read more into that closeness, however should "know there's nothing to it" says Anderson. "It's a game."
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
I know we don’t see Ellen outside of Jersey Devil, but i’d have loved for Mulder to meet her just once, so she could subtly allude to the fact that Scully had found Mulder cute even upon first meeting him.
& mulder would have been so so smug about it for at least a month, like a cat that got the cream, while Scully would’ve turned red as a beetroot before mumbling something silly about how that was before she got to know his annoying ass. (but smiling to herself all the same)
David Duchovny receiving his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Jan. 25, 2016. Gillian Anderson will be receiving hers on Jan. 8, 2018; it will be placed right beside David’s. - - Requested by anon
February 20, 1991:
Ms. Anderson, who was giving her first interview, was pale and looked a bit queasy. When she spoke it was with a vaguely British accent, which comes partly from having lived in London until she was 10 -- her father attended the London Film School, then stayed on -- and partly, she said, from being around Ms. Blethyn. She spoke about herself haltingly, with much of the deadpan quality that her character has in the play.
"When Lynne had my resume in her hand and said, 'Is this all you've done?' I didn't know what she meant," Ms. Anderson said. "I thought I had done a lot. But once I was hired, a big fear of mine was letting Lynne down. She was taking a big risk, and I didn't want her to find out she'd made a mistake." [...]
It's a funny story, but staying employed is every actor's concern. Ms. Anderson says: "There is a slight fear this will be my first and last job for a while, but that's in every actor's mind as long as they live. I tend to have a great deal of faith that wherever my life goes, it's the best thing for me." [...]
Ms. Anderson is quick to compliment her. "It's so wonderful to watch you and Lynne work together," she said to Ms. Blethyn. "The silent understandings they have about the character, and the way they can verbalize what's missing, what they need. The thought-instinct process is so precise." She sighs. "That's one thing that only experience gives you. For me it takes quite a lot longer to come up with what's happening."
"As long as you come up with it, dear," Ms. Blethyn said without missing a beat. And they both laughed.
FOR REFERENCE
(Credit to: gilliananderson.ws)
It couldn't have happened any better for Gillian Anderson if Schwab's Drug Store were still in business. A 1990 graduate of the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago, the young actress moved to New York six months ago, found an apartment in Greenwich Village and, when she wasn't auditioning, worked as a waitress at Dojo, a Japanese health food restaurant on St. Mark's Place. She made barely enough money to cover her rent, and the only theater she saw was a performance of "Lettice and Lovage" with Maggie Smith, where she says she practically got a nosebleed in the back of the balcony.
When Mary Louise Parker dropped out of "Absent Friends" because of illness, Ms. Anderson's agent sent her to audition for the part of Evelyn, a sullen young mother in Alan Ayckbourn's black comedy about a group of friends who console an acquaintance on the death of his fiancee. (The play runs through March 17 at the Manhattan Theater Club.) Ms. Anderson's first reading warranted a callback "to make sure it wasn't a fluke," said the director, Lynne Meadow, and when the second reading went well, the actress was hired on the spot. It was her first job in the theater, and the rest of the cast had started rehearsals a week earlier....
Now, in this dreariest of theater seasons, Ms. Anderson is one of two actresses, both in the same play and both new to New York, whose performances are causing some excitement....
Ms. Meadow said: "I didn't realize we would find someone quite this green. But it is one of those great stories, where someone is cast purely on ability. Gillian's background is improvisational and she took those instincts and put them into the highly technical style Alan Ayckbourn writes in, which is not free-flowing at all. It has to be played the way it's written, so our work was extremely specific, concrete."
January 12, 2003:
S: Then you pursued it to New York. Pounding pavements in New York.
G: At the end of the school year, we went to New York and did monologues. I had written a monologue, I think, about my father - something about a park bench, I don't remember. There was an agent from a very good agency there who basically sat me down and said, "Look, if you will move out here we will represent you." And so I packed all my stuff up and I drove out in my Volkswagen Rabbit one night starting at 11 o'clock and I found my way alone across the country to New York."
S: How far is it? Hundreds of miles.
G: Yeah.
S: And did you have anywhere to live when you got there?
G: No.
S: And you did some waitressing because the parts weren't exactly flowing thick and fast.
G: Not at all, they weren't. In retrospect that's not incredibly true because of the fact that within a year I got work.
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S: You've also had a lot of luck too, Gillian. I'm thinking of your landing the part of "The X-Files" - huge stroke of luck because your casting was entirely an act of faith on the part of its creator, Chris Carter, wasn't it?
G: That is correct. At the time, he was going against form and really stuck his neck out for me based on his determination to have the character portrayed in the way that he saw her and not in the way that Hollywood wanted her to be.
*-*-*-*-*
S: You made "The House of Mirth", film of the Edith Wharton novel... you played the doomed heroine, Lily Bart. Again you were chosen, apparently, because its creator, Terence Davies, wanted you. He had spotted you and he wanted you.
G: Well, what was so bizarre about that was that he had never seen any of my work. And he wanted to meet me based on a photograph of a character that I had played who was a middle-aged biker alcoholic. And that was a still from the film.
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October 1997:
Several days later, Scully and Mulder are both back at their office in FBI headquarters. Scully is on the way to a physical recovery, but feels she has learned something from her experience. Mulder is confused about her behavior. “He’s been caught off guard by not knowing something about her,” Morgan said. “A date with someone in Philadelphia, someone he’s never heard of, someone she’s never told him about. He’s unnerved by his lack of certainty about her, with her being wrong about Ed.” The episode ends with Scully telling Mulder firmly, “It’s my life,” and Mulder saying, “But it’s…” and suddenly stopping. Why didn’t he finish his sentence? “It was our way of saying to the other writers, ‘Here’s where Mulder and Scully are, and now the ball is in your court,'” explained Morgan. “That’s what I always felt was our role. In the first couple of years when we were on the show, we might hand it off and then have to pick up the ball ourselves a couple of episodes later, but knowing we were about to leave and would have no input whatsoever, we just said, ‘Well, here’s this thing, how about this? Now it’s yours.’ I feel that Mulder had come to respect that there’s more to this than just him, that Scully is now a part of his life and he’s a part of hers. I think that she learned the danger of exploring the rebellious side, and that it has to be accompanied by responsibility. What she did almost got her killed. So I think that she probably has it a little in check, and yet she’s always carrying the memory of it on her back. It isn’t anything for her to let go of. But next time she’ll be smarter about it, and she won’t let it get so far away from her.”
Dear research goddess, I recently stumbled upon a post that got me thinking.
Main post dealt with the fact that female trauma is only chosen to evolve a male characters growth. That's something I'm totally d'accord. Especially in the nighties lots of female characters only asset was to show mens emotional side (back in the day when emancipation was thought -by men, of course- to be about men getting in touch with their softer side, instead of equality of the genders. Yeah, takes a lot of nerve to use a word created by women and a movement created by women to be about men, but let's not start on that...)
But someone wrote in the comments that Scullys pregnancy falls into that category too. Saying she would have been fine with Scully chosing work over kids like she always did. Maybe I'm projecting but I don't see it that way. (That the whole pregnancy arc was just to deal more trauma to Scully, yes I see that.) For me it was never a question of job OR kids. I always thought more along the lines of first career THEN a child for her. But my only argument in favor would be the dialogue with Ellen in Jersey Devil and even then she is not openly saying I want kids, just that she struggles to see herself as a mother (meaning she gave the whole kids idea a thought or two).
Do you and your unending depth of knowledge have any inkling towards Scully wanting (or not wanting, I might be wrong) kids?
I think the pregnancy arc is a complicated topic for a lot of people in the fandom, compounded by (perhaps) Gillian's own experiences with her work and early motherhood. To me, it's a Requiem stratagem: something different for the character and a mystery to (hopefully) launch from tv to movies. 20th Century Fox didn't bite-- thus, the scramble for Season 8 story lines.
Reportedly, both GA and DD were excited by the possibility of Scully's pregnancy because it was new territory for them to explore (post here.) CC and Spotnitz were excited because they crafted the surprise during the season of secret sex. The other actors (namely Mitch Pileggi, Robert Patrick, and Annabeth Gish) were excited to either have a greater part and/or to join in for the ride.
Importantly, Gillian liked the character work of Scully going through trauma (post here.) In fact, her thoughts for Season 8 were actually darker than anything CC or Spotnitz planned (post here.) She had her quibbles with the writing here or there, but she praised the writers, the direction, the show itself for most of its run (except the adoption and eventually MSIV.) Was the pregnancy arc/baby arc perfect? Nope. Was she an interested participant? Yes.
As for the other points, well....
Did Scully want kids?
She showed interest as early as The Jersey Devil... second to her ambitions and with the caveat of a suitable partner. But that's normal, and healthy, for someone in her stage of life: it doesn't mean she prized kids less than her career. And that wasn't the whole picture: TJD could be swept away as a CC quirk (he wrote the episode), but Morgan and Wong (whose work Gillian loved) brought this theme back in Home-- the objective then was for Mulder and Scully to surprise each other with more "normal"/human sides of themselves (interview here.) "Never saw you as a mother before" from the lips of a man open to settling down, possibly, after finding his answers: a big deal. An even bigger deal: Scully directly challenges him about the health of his genetics immediately after expressing fear over her future children's health. A year later (A Christmas Carol), Scully revealed she had wanted a family, but her infertility diagnosis made her realize how much she wanted
one-- enough to leave her job in order to adopt Emily (which could have been a symptom of manifesting grief, but suffice to say: a big deal.) It was Scully, again, who raised the settling down/normal life question in Dreamland I and the IVF arc. And lest we forget: Mulder was the man she asked these questions to; and Mulder didn't say yes to any sort of parental care role until the IVF arc (post-The Unnatural, posts here and here.) Scully was living her life and making her peace with "we just keep driving"-- she was happy that way. Parenthood may have been a great aspiration, one she felt keenly, but it was survivable (until William....)
I don't think motherhood was an unnatural journey for her character: family's important to Scully; she's great with kids; she always had the plan in the back of her mind for the future. But she had things to prove first... (which is why the pregnancy arc would have worked so well if the writers didn't throw in super soldiers last minute, because she and Mulder had already proved they were right, finally got together, and became pregnant, thus enabling them to fight leftover alien/Consortium factions and plan for Colonization while also being able to take a step back or two, breathe, and live their lives with their happy ending-- BUT I DIGRESS.)
Was Scully's trauma male-centered?
I've come across many 90s interviewers who tried to paint Scully as a victim or unappreciated by the show or the writers (one of the worst, post here), an idea which Gillian valiantly jousted against. Was her character perfectly written? No. But neither was any character on the show (Nicholas Lea became so frustrated he reportedly vowed not to return, for example.)
And to be quite honest, Scully was treated with greater respect than Mulder sometimes: Mulder was often made more fun of, was a little less capable in social situations (e.g. losing his gun all the time), and had more cracks made about him (ones not exclusive to Darin Morgan episodes) than any of the writers ever gave to Scully. (DD talked about this a lot during the original run, then affectionately termed those moments as "Stupid Mulder" in the Revival.) Scully's dignity was never purposefully degraded or brought into question-- and it worked for her character and the MSR dynamic.
And to be even more honest (and this is just my opinion), I don't believe Scully suffered more damage than Mulder did: they were mishandled by the writers to equal degrees (as unpopular as that opinion is.) We feel her struggles keenly because of what she meant to us and represented for women, but Mulder was also butchered, often concurrently (the brain disease arc, leaving his family on Scully's flimsy say-so, his half of IWTB, most of the My Struggle episodes, I could go on.) Bad is bad no matter if it's a regressive plot line or just lazy, sloppy, or uncreative choices. And every show has these instances, no matter the writing team (for simple comparison: I've watched a lot of women-dominated media with the same problems, too.)
(What is more important to me are the writers' intentions: did they mean to come across x/y/z way, or was it just a fluke or incompetence? I will more easily forgive and move past an error or a true-hearted endeavor than a cynical, calculated point.)
If anything, Mulder's arc is female-centered (finding his sister, proving himself to Scully) while Scully's is self-centered (positively.) The few times she becomes male-centered are when she's most off-balance (Never Again, all things.) And that was a sentiment that every male on the writing team hammered home at one point or another: M/S were equals, soulmates, best friends, and respected partners. Scully in Memento Mori wanted to find the truth "for my own reasons." Scully chose the IVF journey despite societal judgments and expectations. Scully and Mulder remained unmarried partners. All are decisions outside the bounds of conventional perspectives of women and women's autonomy.
(Further, none of the all-male writing team were fond of the adoption arc, nor did they co-sign either pregnancy reveal-- those were CC decisions, for his own reasons. To be discussed in a future post.)
Truly this post could keep going; but it's probably more productive to end now and spare us from my ramblings. :DDD
In summary: Gillian wanted darker material (i.e. more trauma) than the writers often gave her, the pregnancy arc started from an understandable place before it devolved, Scully's openness to a family was coded into canon long before etc. etc., and I've noticed most of the writers on The X-Files weren't fans of the... questionable elements of the show (except CC, which is his preference).
Even shorter summary: reductive problems exist in all media no matter which gender is holding the pen.
