David Duchovny has officially spoken about Ryan Coogler’s upcoming X-Files reboot for Hulu, and his verdict is cautiously optimistic, but he’s not at all sure about his own involvement.
The 65-year-old, known for his portrayal of paranormal investigator Fox Mulder on the original Fox series, was at the time speaking about the second season of his History Channel docuseries Secrets Declassified. Naturally, the Coogler reboot was raised.
In his interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Duchovny confirmed that he has spoken with Coogler and has an idea of what the series will be, but he hasn’t read the pilot script. “There have been talks about certain things, but there’s nothing concrete at this point,” he said.
He’s not even sure if his character, Fox Mulder, still exists, calling the whole situation “hypothetical,” and he “can’t really address it.”
His ideas on the series
What he does have ideas about is what will make or break the series. For Duchovny, it comes down to the writers’ room. The original series had the likes of Vince Gilligan, the Morgan brothers, and Howard Gordon. “We were blessed to have a writers’ room that could generate 20 to 25 movie ideas. I’m not going to insult something like The Pitt, because that’s great television. But The X-Files was a movie idea every week… So I hope Ryan doesn’t have to do 25 episodes and only has to do 10 or 12.”
So, Hulu’s reboot is currently in development Coogler is writing and directing the pilot with showrunner Jennifer Yale. The new leads are going to be Danielle Deadwyler and Himesh Patel as brand-new characters. They’re not characters modeled after X-Files Mulder and Scully, of course.
In the meantime, Duchovny’s personal opinions on real-life UFO shenanigans are dominated by skeptic vibes. So it makes for an interesting contrast with his most iconic role. He told THR he’s “never really seen two people keep a secret, let alone thousands of people” over generations, so he cannot be convinced of grand government cover-ups. And when he does see something unexplained, he applies Occam’s Razor: “the simplest explanation is the true one.”
His docuseries takes real declassified government secrets, and Season 2 is airing Tuesdays on History.
