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Billboard: David Duchovny, Corinne Bailey Rae, Judy Collins & More Honor John Lennon at Kennedy Center Gala

Billboard: David Duchovny, Corinne Bailey Rae, Judy Collins & More Honor John Lennon at Kennedy Center Gala

By Cathy Applefeld Olson | May 9, 2017

Serving as both a fundraiser and a tribute to the late John Lennon, the Kennedy Center’s spring gala on Monday (May 8) night was entitled Come Together — a fitting name for an event that brought together a broad swath of artists, including Corinne Bailey Rae, Judy Collins, Shawn Colvin, Jim James, Amos Lee, Taj Mahal, Esperanza Spalding, and Steven Van Zandt.

Master of ceremonies David Duchovny also attempted to weave the theme into his opener. Noting he was addressing “the 500-pound red-and-blue gorilla in the room,” he said, “We are not going to make this a political event.” Then proudly sharing his “liberal Hollywood status” he quickly added, “I don’t believe politics should be in the arts, but the arts should be in politics.”

It was a message that likely wasn’t lost on at least half of the bipartisan room. Whether the decision to honor Lennon this year was a direct response to the current administration, an attempt to find peace in discordant times or a little bit of both, it’s pretty tough to experience his music without any political reckoning.

Read the full article here

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Entertainment Weekly: Twin Peaks revival – Get a first look at David Duchovny in action

Entertainment Weekly: Twin Peaks revival - Get a first look at David Duchovny in action

By Jeff Jensen | March 23, 2017

Before David Duchovny became a TV legend by playing FBI agent Fox Mulder on The X-Files, he made his name as a young actor with a breakout guest stint on Twin Peaks playing a different kind of law enforcement officer. For three episodes in the kooky second season of David Lynch’s very strange soap opera, Duchovny portrayed DEA agent Denise Bryson. And for an unspecified number of installments in Showtime’s forthcoming revival of the cult classic, Duchovny will be playing Denise again. Maybe. It would seem this way, judging from this exclusive first photo of the 18-part production, courtesy of the production’s set photographer. But with this show… well, we’ll explain why we’re hedging in just a second.

First, let’s geek out on Denise. Agent Bryson was skilled and inspired, no-nonsense yet playful, and presented as a skirt-suited lady with long brown hair and long legs, glossy lips and orange-red fingernails, a kind of business suit Julia Roberts; Duchovny makes for a rather pretty woman. She came to Twin Peaks to investigate a bit of nefarious business that had ensnared Agent Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) — the Dudley Doright detective had been framed for cocaine possession.

Read the full article here

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The New York Times: David Duchovny’s ‘Bucky ____ Dent’

The New York Times: David Duchovny’s ‘Bucky ____ Dent’

By Joseph Salvatore | March 31, 2016

A fiction teacher once told us that we should know every detail about the characters we create, down to the kind of bath towel they prefer, even if the towel never appears in the story. That advice smacked of Stanislavsky’s “method,” wherein actors try to learn everything about a character’s background — first kiss, favorite smell — before stepping onstage. I wondered, a bit enviously, if actors who tried their hand at writing fiction would invent characters with greater depth than we mere scribblers.

I’m not sure about all actor-authors, but in “Bucky ____ Dent,” his second novel, the TV star David Duchovny so believably brings to life his slacker, pot-­smoking, 30-something protagonist, Ted Fullilove, that we feel for Ted the way we feel for most slacker, pot-smoking, 30-somethings: Get a life.

The problem is that Ted thinks he has one. When we meet him he’s selling peanuts at Yankee Stadium during the 1978 baseball season. He’s a devoted follower of the Grateful Dead; he has a ponytail, a “soft belly” and “man breasts” (due, we’re told, to hormonal imbalances caused by chronic pot smoking). He’s also a highly literate Ivy League graduate who reads the modernists and wants only enough money to keep his “brokedown” Bronx apartment so he can write the Great American Novel (always a dubious aspiration). But in fact, Ted’s already got several novels in progress, including the 536-page “Mr. Ne’er-Do-Well” and another that comes in at 1,171 pages and weighs over 12 pounds. So maybe “slacker” doesn’t apply to his writing, but it applies to every other part of his life, especially relationships. He had one true love, now gone; his pet is a battery-operated goldfish; his mother is dead; he hasn’t spoken to his father in half a decade. And his literary agent hates his novels. Ted’s life is ready for a shake-up.

Read the full article here

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The Observer: David Duchovny’s New Baseball Novel Is Pretty Good, Dammit

The Observer: David Duchovny’s New Baseball Novel Is Pretty Good, Dammit

By Ken Kurson | April 12, 2016

Do you want to see eyes roll? Mention an actor whose desire to be taken seriously has led him to write a novel. It would be an unendurable cliché in David Duchovny’s case except that Bucky F*cking Dent, his new novel about baseball and fathers, is so f*cking good.

The book tells the late 70s era story of Ted Fullilove, who is squandering his Ivy League education by vending peanuts at Yankee Stadium while he struggles to write the Great American Novel. When Ted learns that his father, Marty, is dying of lung cancer, he moves back into his childhood home to ease Marty’s transition to the great beyond and also repair the damage that years of absenteeism have wrought. The hook is that Marty suffers when the Red Sox lose so Ted engineers a scheme, aided by the dishy Grateful Dead-tattooed Mariana, by which the Red Sox appear to erase the curse of the Bambino and win all of their closing games in 1978 (instead of, as all New Yorkers deliciously remember, choke down the stretch, with the title Yankee providing the death blow).

If it’s annoying that Mr. Duchovny, who’s already a phenomenally successful and painfully good-looking actor is also a funny and natural writer – his last book, the animal allegory Holy Cow, also earned high praise from skeptical critics—then at least give him some points for self-awareness. Like his character in Californication, Mr. Duchovny knows how he comes off and doesn’t mind if you resent him. He just wants a fair shake.

Mr. Duchovny spoke to the Observer about writing, acting and the shocking demise of the wondrous Garry Shandling.

As I was reading this book and preparing to interview you, I thought of a scene in Californication where your character is giving a reading and the audience kind of boos the Hollywood figure who enters and you say, ‘my people.’ I wonder if that’s a sense of yourself that you have, a sort of a literary-minded guy that these really are your people.

I think maybe so. I mean obviously that was more from the mind of Tom Kapinos who wrote and created the show, and I think he would think of himself more as a literary person than as a Hollywood person, but I think you’re right for me as well. I grew up reading. I grew up being taught and told that books were a way to become more fully yourself and to become an adult. My father was a writer. My father published his first novel when he was 72. But when I was growing up he identified himself as a writer, even though he had a 9 to 5 job to support the family. So it was always part of my life and I would say, you know whenever I had to fill out those forms in school that asked you what you’re going to be I would always put writer, whatever that meant. I would put lawyer too because it seemed like they made decent money. It was always kind of just part of my identity, so when I finally got to it the last couple of years and people would ask me, “Is it weird to be thought of as a writer?’ I would be like no, I’ve always thought of myself as a writer who is doing some acting.

The last time I saw you in person was at Comic-Con when the X-Files was being rebooted and you and Chris Carter were on a panel. I felt such a tenderness toward these kids who really seemed like mostly outsiders wherever they live and they get to kind of come together. Your writing has a little bit of that feel. This guy Ted can’t find himself, so talk to me about how strongly you identify with your character.

I think I probably fit in better growing up than Ted does in the book, but I think if you’re a writer, that means that you’re an observer. You observe people, and that means that you have a mind that wants to do that. You have a mind that wants to observe more than it wants to engage in many ways. And you’re already outside because you’re looking in. That’s the nature of someone who desires to write. So I think temperamentally I’ve always been an observer, even though it might appear from the outside that I’m active and being included.

Read the full interview here.

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Washington Post: David Duchovny’s hilarious new novel hits a home run

Washington Post: David Duchovny’s hilarious new novel hits a home run

By Micah Pollack | March 31, 2016

David Duchovny has staked out the high ground in the growing pantheon of celebrity novelists. The “X-Files” star’s first work, “Holy Cow,” was a wry magical realist story told through the first-person narration of a bovine on an upstate New York dairy farm. Now comes “Bucky F*cking Dent,” set against the backdrop of 1970s New York and one of baseball’s most famous pennant races.

Much like his debut, Duchovny’s second work traces a rite of passage, this one the ­well-trodden terrain of a son coming to grips with a distant father who has only a few months to live. Both father and son spend chunks of the narrative trying to put the totality of life in perspective.

Read the full article here

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NME: Soundtrack Of My Life – David Duchovny

NME: Soundtrack Of My Life - David Duchovny

NME puts together a list of some of the most important tracks in David Duchovny’s life.

By NME Blog | February 19, 2016

David Duchovny, star of The X-Files and lead singer in his own band reveals the tunes that have soundtracked his life

The first song I remember hearing
The Friends of Distinction – ‘Grazing In The Grass’
“I bought 45s when I was a kid because they were cheaper, at 99 cents, where an album cost three dollars and 69 cents, which was too much for my budget. The first single I bought was called ‘Grazing In The Grass’. It’s kind of an R&B/soul number. ‘Grazing in the grass is a gas, baby, can you dig it?’”

The song I wish I’d written
Oasis – Wonderwall
“I have this as an alarm on my phone so I hear it very often. A perfect pop song is a thing of beauty and
I’d say this is a perfect pop song. But there are so many songs I wish I’d written. Another one that comes into my head is ‘One’ by U2. I also wish I’d written ‘Dear Prudence’ by The Beatles, from ‘The White Album’, and ‘Thank You’ by Sly & The Family Stone.”

The album that changed my life
The Beatles – ‘The White Album’
“It’s a thing that points to certain mysteries that I wasn’t quite yet ready to understand. There are throwaways on it; it wasn’t all hits. That kind of got me off the ‘just the hits’ feeling that I had when I was a kid. At the time I thought, ‘Why get a whole album? Just play the hits!’ But a few albums changed my life. There was also Elton John’s ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’, which seemed to have a big scope. It seemed like a lot was being dealt with. And ‘Fresh’ by Sly & The Family Stone. And some Yes albums; I was into Yes. There was a lot of pot smoking going on at a certain point. Yes were good for that.”

The song I play to get ready for a gig
Various
“Backstage when I’m with the band we’ll start singing some songs, but they’re always different. We’ll also stand in a huddle, put our arms around each other and say something vaguely inspirational, like ‘Rock’n’roll!’ Something clichéd and ridiculous like that. Or maybe, ‘Let’s go melt some faces!’”

The song I can no longer listen to
King Harvest – ‘Dancing In The Moonlight’
“I think if you can’t bear to listen to a song any more, it passes. All things pass. But there are certain songs I used to play for my kids that brutally remind me of the passage of time. This was on a mixtape I used to play in the car to get them to sleep. I hear it now and think: ‘Oh my God, my kids aren’t three any more.’ It feels rough.”

The song that makes me dance
Sly & the Family Stone – ‘Thank You’
“I’m never able to stop myself from dancing. There’s no song that makes me unable to dance.”

The band that made me want to make music
The Beatles
“They were my favourite band for forever. But when I started to play guitar and think about songs together, it was Bob Dylan and The Band. More straight-ahead, rootsy rock’n’roll.”

The song I want played at my funeral
David Duchovny – ‘Stars’
“I’d send ’em off with one of my songs. I don’t care what they say afterwards. ‘How egotistical!’ Well, I’m dead, I don’t care. ‘Stars’ has a cosmic feel to it; the lyrics are kind of eternal and centre on the fact that you see light from some stars that are dead because it takes so long to travel to us. It would be good for the funeral because it’s a meditation on death. Some things appear to be alive but are actually dead.”

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The Guardian: David Duchovny – ‘I can’t play Mulder the way I did. That would be obscene’

The Guardian: David Duchovny - ‘I can't play Mulder the way I did. That would be obscene’

By Dave Schilling | February 5, 2016

A small crowd has gathered in front of the Fox theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Carrying rolled-up copies of Variety magazine and holding up mobile phone cameras, they press their flesh as close to the metal barricade as possible. They are here to see David Duchovny, most famous for the newly resurrected science-fiction drama The X-Files, whose star is being unveiled on the Walk of Fame today. Duchovny’s closest confidantes are here, too – X-Files creator Chris Carter, Californication co-star Pamela Adlon, his manager Melanie Green, his brother – but they’re outnumbered by the strangers, the autograph seekers, and the tourists who will stop anywhere they see a fence and some security guards in LA.

Duchovny is a recovering sex addict and a famously private man. During the ceremony that follows, his friend, the comedian Garry Shandling, refers to him as a “sensitive, vulnerable guy”. A few hours later, at a nearby hotel, I ask Duchovny if this is true. In his slow, laconic drawl, he says it is. “You know, Garry can stand there and tell you I’m this or I’m that,” he says, “but that’s not really the narrative that’s out there, and that’s OK.”

Duchovny’s hotel room is an ornate, whimsical pastiche of styles and patterns. The entire building reeks of a pungent perfume, as though the staff were covering up an even more heinous smell. It is a fitting location in which to discuss one of the more artificial, touristy traditions of Hollywood, one about which Duchovny seems ambivalent.

“You know, we live in an ironic age,” he says. “To hear Garry go up there in this quite probably cheesy ceremony from another time – you know, campy, kitschy, in a crappy part of Hollywood – it could be just awful. If you pull back a certain way, you want to just run. Listening there, I don’t know what Garry is going to say, and I hear him try to say heartfelt, loving things as a friend, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, he’s really trying to communicate, and that’s beautiful and ballsy.’ Because people are out of that habit. It’s so hostile the way we communicate socially now, and so ironic and so meta and distant and multilayered. To hear a guy go out there and say, ‘I love Dave.’ I felt exposed.”

Read the full article here

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Billboard: David Duchovny on His Folksy Debut Album – ‘I’m Never Going to Win ‘American Idol’ But I Do Have Something to Say’

Billboard: David Duchovny on His Folksy Debut Album - 'I'm Never Going to Win 'American Idol' But I Do Have Something to Say'

Billboard interviews David Duchovny about his newest hobby that led to the release of his debut album.


By Harley Brown | May 4, 2015



It’s unclear what’s more surprising: David Duchovny coming out with a folksy album of Jeff Tweedy-indebted guitar jams, Hell or Highwater, or that the decorated X Files and Californication actor got his start playing the recorder — “a big rock and roll instrument if you’re into Jethro Tull,” he tells Billboard. But Duchovny has been harboring musical aspirations since he first picked up a guitar four years ago. “I wanted to become decent enough to play songs to amuse myself,” he says.

Eventually, he realized the three-chord rock-and-roll structures of classics like Elton John>’s “Tiny Dancer” and Robbie Robertson’s “Broken Arrow” weren’t that hard to write. “I thought, ‘I can throw some chords together,'” he says. “A lot of songwriters say words are the hardest part, but it was the opposite for me.”

Hell or Highwater arrives May 12, about a month before the much-hyped new season of The X Files goes into production this summer, followed by shooting for the new season of his L.A. crime drama Aquarius. If there’s time in his schedule, the 54-year-old aims to tour behind the record. “If someone asks me if I’d like to have 10 Christmases,” he explains, “I’ll say, ‘Yeah, I do.'”

Does your poetry background help with writing lyrics?

Writing lyrics are very different from poems because they have to allow for music to carry some of the weight, whereas with a poem, the words do all the work. That’s why when you see lyrics on a page you’re like, “These words suck,” and then you hear the song and they work. A Beatles lyric like “I love her” couldn’t be more saccharine but then you hear it in the midst of the song and it moves me.

A lot of times an idea or a phrase would come to mind, like “hell or high water.” “Stars,” a fun one on the album, started with this idea that I think a lot of people are aware of: starlight that you see from certain stars is so far away that the light takes so long to get here, and by the time it does, the stars have actually died, but you’re still seeing the light because it takes so long to get here. That’s a good metaphor for love.

Are your songs autobiographical at all?

Neil Simon said, “Everything’s autobiographical, even the stuff you make up.” I tend to agree with that. It’s not confessional, about me, or about anybody, but these are my life experiences. I’m not trying to make a statement of any kind other than this is what I see, this is what I felt, this is what I want to sing about. Straight autobiography is interesting and artful, but what makes it art is that you turn it into something else. I could write lyrics that were straight autobiography but I think the song would really suck.

Did you grow up in a musical family?

I didn’t play an instrument. None of my siblings played an instrument. Well, my brother played the flute. My dad loved music. He listened to a lot of big bands and jazz stuff that I hated. We had a generational misunderstanding of one another’s music. My brother was a little older and in the middle of rock and roll—he was into the [Grateful] Dead, which I never was. I grew up listening to the Beatles, the [Rolling] Stones, the Who, Yes, and ’70s prog rock. I was also big into funk. As I become a better musician I hope to be able to play more funk.

What was it like recording in a studio?

All the songs were written in my apartment, but the production has opened my up to working with other musicians. It was much more piecemeal than I imagined. It’s very much like acting. You don’t have to be perfect all the way through – you get plenty of takes. It was a complete learning experience by total immersion. I’m a rudimentary guitar player; I play well enough to throw some chords together. I’m not even a good enough player to record my own songs. Once I took it out of my room, it started evolving with guys who really knew how to play. Now I also have to learn how to perform the songs. The album was recorded in Boston [Somervile’s Q Division Studios] where label is, and where the guys that make up my band are. They’re all Berklee [School of Music] grads. We did it in a week and a half, which is certainly not a luxurious recording schedule, I’m told. It was tough at first but then as we got toward the end of the week I started to feel more comfortable, and now I look forward to doing it again.

How did you discover your singing voice?

I’m also a beginner in terms of my voice. I’ve never sung; it wasn’t even a hobby or anything, and all of a sudden I’m standing in front of a mic going, “This is for real.” I was lucky enough to be steered towards Don Lawrence, who teaches voice in New York. The first 20-minute session completely changed the way I think about making a sound out of my mouth. One of the things I learned with Don is that all the sounds are made in the back of your throat, that the shape of your throat is an entity to amplify sound. It doesn’t come from your mouth, where your tongue is up there with your teeth. I was like, “Oh fuck, that was revolutionary to me.”

I’m not a guy who came out of the womb with perfect pitch. I’m never gonna win American Idol and I never will, but I do have something to say and Don helped me maximize that. I do have enough of a sense of pitch that I know I’m not singing it correctly so I’m in that hell where I know I’m tone-deaf. But I listened to the album and I like the singing on it. I’m tickled by it.

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Rolling Stone: Hear David Duchovny’s Moody Alt-Rock From Debut Album

Rolling Stone: Hear David Duchovny’s Moody Alt-Rock From Debut Album

Rolling Stone reports on David Duchovny’s simultaneous releases of his first album ‘Hell or Highwater’ and the new show ‘Aquarius.’


By Kory Grow | March 31, 2015



David Duchovny will release his first album of music, Hell or Highwater, this spring. The record contains 12 songs that the X-Files and Californication actor composed himself.

Preview a Cure-like instrumental section of “Hell or Highwater” and the record’s upbeat, indie-folk-leaning “Another Year” below. The title track is out now; the full LP is due out May 12th.

“Making this record is a dream come true, but I never had this dream – it’s still a shock when I think about how all this music happened,” Duchovny said in a statement. “What I do know is that I feel these songs represent the truest expression that I’ve ever been able to achieve and I look forward to sharing it with everyone.”

The actor discussed his foray into music with Rolling Stone last year, comparing its sound to Wilco and R.E.M. but qualifying those references by saying he wished it sounded like that “in [his] wildest dreams.” Duchovny first picked up a guitar a few years ago, learning Flaming Lips’ “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” as his first song on the instrument. Ultimately, his interest in playing guitar dovetailed into his interest in writing poetry.

“Once I started playing music, I started thinking, ‘Gee, I should be able to write lyrics,’” Duchovny said. “And I just fell backwards into the whole thing. It’s just been a real pleasure in my life, regardless of who buys it and what people think of it when it comes out. It’s been a lifesaver just to be able to play music, write songs and think about singing songs to friends.”

With the album on its way, right now is a very busy time for Duchovny. He’s written an “allegorical story” in the form of a novel, Holy Cow, which came out earlier this year. And he also has signed on to do a limited run of new X-Files episodes, also with Gillian Anderson and series creator Chris Carter back on board.

But first, he will star in NBC’s Aquarius, a period drama set in the Sixties in which Duchovny plays a cop who’s on the hunt for a killer that turns out to be the Manson Family. “It’s [set in] a very interesting time period for the country,” he told Rolling Stone. “Still, to this day, there’s a lot of mystique about the promise of the Sixties and what went wrong there and what’s gone wrong since. You had Manson on one hand, and the dark side of the Sixties, and you’ve got peace, love and Flower Power on the light side. There’s a lot to work with.”

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The Guardian – Interview with David Duchovny: ‘I’ve more self-doubt as an actor than as a writer”

The Guardian - Interview with David Duchovny: 'I've more self-doubt as an actor than as a writer"

David tells The Guardian more about his acting and writing career, as well as his upcoming projects.


By Rachel Cooke | Feb 22, 2015



David Duchovny is best known for his role as FBI agent Fox Mulder in The X-Files, and as dissolute writer Hank Moody in Californication. He has a BA in English literature from Princeton, where he wrote a dissertation on the early novels of Samuel Beckett, and an MA from Yale. He has now published a novel, Holy Cow, in which a cow called Elsie, a pig called Shalom and a turkey called Tom escape a farm in upstate New York in search of a better life.

How did you get the idea for Holy Cow?

I had an idle idea while driving one day that if I were a cow I’d probably do my best to get to India. I thought that was funny. But then I thought: what else could happen? If I were a pig, I’d try and get to a place where kosher laws were enforced and I wouldn’t be eaten. And… a turkey might think that Turkey would be safe. So then we’ve got our three… This sounded to me like it could be a kids’ movie, so I wrote up a treatment and pitched it as an animated film. But the story includes some Muslim-Jewish political discussion, some drug-taking, and the circumcision of a pig. They politely passed. So I shelved it until, a year and a half ago, I thought: why don’t I write it up as a novel?

It seems to come with a message about how we treat farm animals, and perhaps that we eat too much meat.

I’m not a polemicist. I’m not a proselytiser for vegetarianism or climate change. I don’t force my personal morality on others, and I don’t like books that try to. To me, it’s a work of entertainment first and foremost. A decent work of art raises more questions than it answers. If it answers questions, it becomes propaganda. The book really comes out of my earliest reading: I grew up on Aesop’s Fables… the first stories I ever heard involved talking animals.

Which is harder, writing or acting?

I can’t say that I enjoy writing; it’s difficult. I would say I enjoy having written. But I’ve way more self-doubt as an actor – I come from more of a writing background than a performing background. My sense of myself from an early age was as an observer, a thinker. I didn’t even see that many movies as a kid.

What about reviews? When you act, you’re part of a team; you can hide. But as a writer, your name’s the only one on the jacket.

I don’t read any reviews of anything I do. I haven’t for 10 years, and it has made life a lot better. So much criticism today is snarky and ad hominem. I’m of the school that says: judge the work, not who did it. It’s hard for actors; it’s their body and face they’re using. As a writer it should be easier, but I don’t think it is. I didn’t want to use a pseudonym: I want people to read the book, so why not use whatever celebrity I have to bring attention to it? But reading reviews is like finding your beloved’s journal: the only reason you’re going to open it is because you want to hurt yourself.

You abandoned your PhD at Yale… what was it about?

The title of the dissertation that never will be was: Magic and technology in contemporary fiction and poetry. The writers I was going to discuss were James Merrill,Norman Mailer, Ishmael Reed, Robertson Davies, Thomas Pynchon. I didn’t finish it because I’m a lazy piece of shit. I started acting, and once I left the halls of academia, it was hard to keep the focus on something so rarefied.

Did you regret giving it up?

I still have regrets; I’m a regretful person. Before I had any success as an actor, when I was receiving rejection after rejection, I thought: what the hell are you doing? You worked your ass off, you were at the best places, you were set up to have an interesting and nice life teaching and writing, and now you’re auditioning for a potato-chip commercial in your bathing suit.

Do you buy a lot of new books?

I order up to four every week. The last two I enjoyed were Dept of Speculation by Jenny Offill, which I found to be devastatingly sad, and Outline by Rachel Cusk. She writes beautifully about things that are very difficult to write about.

Both those novels are about women who are getting older and feel invisible, a subject the movies don’t ever touch on. This isn’t a problem for men, is it? They just get (supposedly) more attractive, especially on screen, where their wives and girlfriends only get younger.

Well, that’s the cliche, and there is a standard that is kinder to men than to women. That’s unfair, though I don’t know how you legislate against it. But of course I worry about ageing. I don’t want to get old. I’d have a facelift if they ever worked… But it seems to me they don’t look good.

What’s coming up for you next?

I’m writing another novel, and I have an album coming out, Hell Or High Water. I also have a new show on NBC, Aquarius. It’s set in late-60s LA, and I play a homicide detective who’s watching the world change and isn’t so happy about it. An old flame of mine calls me and says that her daughter has run off with this guy, Charles Manson. This is before that name rings anybody’s bell. So I get caught up in the counterculture, a world I don’t understand, because I grew up in the 20s and 30s.

Why don’t you come to London and do a play by your beloved Beckett?

[Laughs] Well, Gillian [Anderson, his X-Files co-star] has done so well in London. But she’s a proper actress. She studied; I taught myself on the job. Doing theatre wouldn’t be a return to my roots — that would be going back to grad school. I do love London, though. If you came to me with a brilliant play, I imagine I’d try to do it.

There is still talk of a Mulder and Scully reunion. Aren’t you done with The X-Files?

If you’d asked me this question 10 years ago, I would have said: yes, I’ve had enough. But at this point, it’s almost like going out on a greatest hits tour. It would be a lark. And I think it’s going to happen pretty soon.