When The X-Files co-stars Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny reunited for an hour-long conversation on Duchovny’s podcast Fail Better this week, the show on which they appeared for decades was obviously a major point of discussion. And Anderson took the opportunity to explain why she chose to quit the series after its 11th season: “The end was problematic, storyline-wise. Particularly for Scully.”
Premiering in 1993 and streaming now on Hulu, The X-Files starred Duchovny and Anderson as FBI partners Mulder and Scully, who investigated weird supernatural crime on Fox every week. After “officially” ending in 2002, the stars reunited with creator Chris Carter for two additional revival seasons in 2016 and 2018 — the 2018 season, to date, being the last.
There was one pretty clear reason for the show not continuing: In the fall of 2017, in the lead-up to the release of Season 11, Anderson announced that it would be the last time she’d play Scully on screen. During the 2018 Television Critics Association press tour, she told journalists that she had never intended to do another season beyond those final ten episodes, and “there’s lots of other stuff I want to do, and I don’t really want to be tied down to months and months of doing any particular one thing that I feel like I’ve done.”
Reflecting on that time in 2024, Anderson told Duchovny on the podcast that after she made that announcement, “It was the first time that I got the sense of like, oh, am I the only one that thinks that [the show won’t go on]. Everybody else seems really disappointed that I’ve just declared that.”
“It felt a little bit like, ‘Okay, I’m done with you guys,’ you know? I know that’s not what you meant rationally,” Duchovny acknowledged.
Anderson then went on to talk about the creative forces that also contributed to her decision. In Season 11, Mulder and Scully resumed investigating weird supernatural crime, though the writers also took the opportunity to reengage with a storyline from the later years of the show’s original run: Specifically, the previously-thought-to-be-infertile Scully getting pregnant in the Season 7 finale, having a baby named William who eventually was put up for adoption for his own protection.
A teenaged William became a key figure in the overarching Season 11 narrative, while Scully became a more passive character by the end of the season (until, that is, the announcement of yet another surprise pregnancy in the Season 11 finale). “It felt like Scully’s trajectory was no longer one of strength and agency,” Anderson said on the podcast. “It felt like it was beholden to an old idea of what a woman is… Literally all she could talk about was William and finding William. That’s literally a one-track song.”
Anderson also said that “I wasn’t really enjoying the direction that it was heading… and I didn’t have a voice in it. And so I felt like I needed to move on to something where I might have more of a voice.”
Additionally, Anderson and Duchovny touched on the fact that in 2000, Duchovny also quit the show without discussing it with Anderson first, something for which he took the opportunity to apologize. But she said that, “[At the time], I thought at first I thought, well, then we’re both going to [quit], because clearly I can’t go on without him. I don’t think I blamed you at all. I don’t think I was upset.”
“Well, thanks a lot,” Duchovny commented wryly.
Then, she continued, “They started talking about, well, if you stay on, you can actually make some good money. And I kind of went, ‘Oh, okay. Well that’s…’”
“‘Well, fuck him,’” Duchovny joked.
“Yeah,” Anderson laughed.
For their full conversation, which also explores their respective childhoods, experiences with parenting, and Anderson’s new line of G-Spot beverages, check out Duchovny’s Fail Better podcast. The X-Files is streaming now on Hulu.
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