David Duchovny: ‘X-Files’ Creator Predicted Rise of Conspiracy Culture

Although the truth is out there, David Duchovny keeps his feet firmly planted on the ground these days when it comes to outlandish theories.

The X-Files alum reflected on his time on the hit sci-fi series and how creator Chris Carter was “almost clairvoyant” in depicting the conspiracy culture that has permeated much of the country.

“Mulder’s way of looking at the world was through conspiracy and that was the fringe at that point,” Duchovny told The Times of his beloved character. “It doesn’t seem to be so fringe any more. It’s really the world that Chris Carter foresaw happening almost 30 years ago.”

Although he finds conspiracies to be “mostly just lazy thinking,” Duchovny doesn’t consider himself any more evidence-based than FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder. “Not at all. I’m an artist — I am associative-based, and I see poetry as science and science as poetry,” he said.

Duchovny and Gillian Anderson starred as Mulder and Scully in the Fox sci-fi series, which ran for nine seasons from 1993 to 2002. The show was revived for two more seasons between 2016 and 2018. The pair also starred together in the 1998 feature adaptation, as well as The X-Files: I Want to Believe in 2008.

Explaining why he first left the series halfway through season 8, Duchovny said, “That was just me wanting to have a family, but also to try other things. It had kind of taken up my life.”

“There was no animosity with the actual show and the people I worked with,” he added. “I am proud of the show — it was culturally central in a way that it’s very hard to do these days in a fragmented landscape. There are so many lightning-strike aspects to it that I can’t help but think of it as some kind of a miracle.”

Last year, Carter revealed that Ryan Coogler is “going to remount The X-Files with a diverse cast” under the Black Panther director’s five-year exclusive deal with Disney Television through his Proximity Media banner.

“So, he’s got his work cut out for him because we covered so much territory,” Coogler said on the On the Coast podcast, acknowledging that a modern update where the characters investigate the paranormal would look different as “we’re steeped in conspiracies” today.

Source: The Times, On the Coast podcast, Disney Television, Proximity Media