the x-files hoard

August 16, 1998: Scully's skirts are always knee-length. Why is that? "Well, shorter or longer is not appropriate for the FBI." I never wear any that end at the knee. I am also 5ft 3in and it would make me look smaller. "Knee-lengths work. That's her," she says defensively, and goes on to say that Scully has been her best friend for five years. "I've relied on her strength to carry me through things." Even if she's no longer consumed with enthusiasm for the character, she's none the less consumed by the idea of creating an icon, and extremely committed to her work and says if she were in a relationship it would have to be with someone who is as committed and consumed by their work as she is. "Someone who's trying to change things in some way or do something important." 

September 1998: I was much more into Scully's straightness, her kind of dowdy thing. That helped me figure out who she was. There was a plaid suit that I wore once. What were we thinking? Somebody new came on the show to do hair, and it became more stylish and sleeker, and I went, "... I had no idea." And then there was the whole period of pregnancy. A lot of women will cut their hair off; it changes texture, it gets in the way. So I had a permanent bad hair day in front of ten million people. (laughs)

May 2002: ANDERSON I wanted to be realistic about Scully. I never paid attention to my look, and, in a way, thank God, because it added to the weird, cryptic nature of the whole thing. She seemed so different [from me] that I really got into the matronly outfits. Seeing them now, I mean, there was a red-and-green plaid jacket that I wore, and all the pleats--ugh! It wasn't until we moved down [to L.A.] that they hired a new designer and started to put Scully into hipper things. At first I was like, "No, no, no!" Then I started to say, "Well, it does look better..."

January 2016: In the beginnning, Dana Scully’s hair was my natural colour, which is as dull as anything.  It was 1993 and I was 24.  After we shot the pilot and The X-Files was picked up for series, our executive producer Chris Carter said: “She’s going red.”  And that’s how Scully became a redhead.  For the next nine years I dyed it on a semi-regular basis, but then the show ended in 2002 I defiantly became a blonde and have been one ever since.

For the 2015 reboot of six episodes, the question naturally came up: to dye or not to dye?  My hair was already falling out from playing so many platinums (Stella in The Fall, Bedelia in Hannibal, Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire), so “wig” was the answer.

Cut to day two of filming in the heart of downtown Vancouver (taking the role of Washington, DC), smack in the middle of lunch hour.  We were drawing crowds, and these days “crowds” means phones, photographs and instant internet activity.  A close-up of my hair was immediately posted online: “It’s not the right red!” (outrage); “The parting is wrong!” (disgust). Fans, who know more about the show than any of us making it, were spot on - they had been watching Scully right from the show’s beginning - and a new wig was made....

One thing that was going to be different this time around, though: Scully’s wardrobe.  During the original series, I had paid not a lick of attention to her style.  I had known that I wanted her to be homely, because I was determined to be a real actress who didn’t care about vanity.  But little did I realise that my lack of awareness would lead to years of bad hair and polyester suits.  To be fair, the show’s costume girl was great and was simply pulling outfits from what was on offer in the mid-Nineties: fabrics that I can’t even think of without shivers running up my spine; double-breasted suits and shoulder pads as big as a house.  Scully’s taste got better as the seasons went on, but it wasn’t really until the sixth season when we moved down to Los Angeles and a new team came on board, that I was forced to address the issue, head-on.  New, hipper clothes and a slicker haircut for Scully.  Even a leather coat, here and there.

This time around, after 13 years of creating other characters and realising that I not only have a say in how they appear but that I actually enjoy that part of the process - I have strong opinions about how my characters express themselves through clothes - I worked much more actively with The X-Files wardrobe designer Chris Hargadon to hone Scully’s style.  I had worked with Chris on Hannibal, in which he got to express his creative genius through Hannibal’s fine tailoring.  Our squarish FBI agents were perhaps not quite so fun to dress, yet it was essential to precisely define their typical wardrobes. So Scully is still a bit homely but with a  taste for fabric and colour, more cotton than silk, no zips as accent, nothing too fitted, no patterns.

So aside from a few stylistic tweaks, what we are giving the audience in this new mini-series is exactly what they got originally.

January 14, 2016: “The costume designer would pull something that on one level would be an interesting thing for Scully to wear, that would give it a little bit of a kick,” says the actress. “But she’s just not that girl. She’s very plain; she’s slightly square. In the later seasons,” she notes sternly, “we went a little too far putting her in leather. The types of suits she wears are very, very basic. There is one new episode in particular where she wears a lot of at-home clothes – she’s not a jeans wearer, she’s a comfy slacks and V-neck Banana Republic sweaters woman.”

BONUS

February 20, 1997: Q: The characters dress well, which I assume is one of the things you had in mind?

CC: It is. Except we made a point with Mulder and Scully: Mulder couldn’t wear three-button suits in the beginning because it was too fashionable; Scully had to wear business attire, because the FBI is very rigid about those things. And actually we’ve been criticized for Scully’s dowdy suits. I always thought that was unfair — it was from people who, I think, watched too much Melrose Place. I think the characters are dressed nicely. I learned very early on when I was producing that even if you have a character who would shop at J. C. Penney, you better put them in Armani. Because Armani fits better, and you want your actors and actresses always to look good. So that’s why David wears Hugo Boss suits. And Gillian wears very fashionable clothes, but nothing that’s a fashion statement.