David Duchovny Breaks Down His Career

And I actually thought that it couldn't go very long,

cause I thought, oh, it's about aliens.

You're gonna see the alien or you're not gonna

see the alien.

If you see the alien, it's over.

If you don't see the alien, you're gonna get frustrated.

I thought maybe we do a year.

Maybe we do half a year.

Maybe I just shoot the pilot.

Maybe it never gets on the air.

[calm music playing]

Hi, I'm David Duchovny

and this is the timeline of my career.

Coop.

Dennis?

It's a long story but

actually I prefer Denise, if you don't mind.

Okay.

The casting director for Twin Peaks was a woman

named Johanna Ray, terrific casting director.

And she was an advocate of mine to, to work.

She hadn't cast me, but I'd, I'd auditioned for her for

I think a few things.

Mark Frost, who was running the show at the time,

David Lynch's partner on Twin Peaks.

This is the second year of the show, was good friends

with James Spader, and Spader had conceived of this role

of the, of the transvestite Drug Enforcement Agent,

Denise Bryson.

And he was gonna play it.

Obviously he, it was his idea and Mark wrote it

and he was gonna play it,

but I guess he got busy,

he got some other job.

So they threw it open to anybody,

and I was anybody.

I know if the show had gone a third year, Twin Peaks,

that is, back, back then,

I had wished that I was gonna do a few more episodes.

I only did three.

And then again in 2017, I guess four.

Don't you just love, sometimes,

saying Federal Bureau of Investigation like that all

at once, unabbreviated.

It just gives me such a thrill.

It's interesting to take a character,

you know, through, through that many years.

I mean not, not literally not, you know,

I wasn't shooting all that time,

but it's interesting to ring the changes as, as a human.

Coop, I may be wearing a dress,

but I still put my panties on one leg at a time,

if you know what I mean.

Shoot it!

Shoot the dog, shoot the dog. Shoot him!

It's him or you, boy.

Shoot him!

Come on.

This was kind of a hot script at the time.

You know, this was a time in Hollywood where indie films,

as scripts, would get kind of heat

on them and people would be really aware of them.

And if you were pretty much an unknown actor,

you could have a shot at these independent films.

You know, when I read that script,

I felt I had a shot to get it.

Brad Pitt wasn't, I mean, he was well known kind of,

but he wasn't like Brad Pitt, movie star.

Juliet Lewis was probably

the biggest star when we, when we shot it,

and she's an amazing actress.

So I read for that a number of times, you know,

they were really, they sweated me on that.

They sweated those, our two roles, me and Michelle Forbes.

They sweated our roles pretty hard, but we came through.

We read on our own, we read together,

and then we read with, with Brad and Juliet.

So there were like different, different stages

of like chemistry and, you know, see how the four of us,

cause it was mostly the four of us

throughout the whole film,

how we kind of interacted, how that felt.

To me, it was great.

I had a hotel room, you know, in Atlanta, remember that.

It was like living the high life for me.

I like that.

Yeah, I'll bet you do.

Well, you should try it once in a while.

Why would I make them so uncomfortable?

It probably has to do with your reputation

Reputation. I have a reputation?

Mulder, look, Colton plays by the book and you don't.

They feel your methods, your theories are...

Spooky.

At that point, I was really thinking of just doing movies.

I wasn't interested in getting on a television show.

If you remember back to like, well, if you know,

back '91, '92,

that's really when X-Files gets on the air,

then you get NYPD Blue, Homicide.

You start to get these shows that are movie worthy.

But before that, you know, TV was like second class citizen.

You know, my head was at, like, don't do TV.

Don't be a TV be actor.

I didn't want to get wrapped up in a television show

because I thought, okay,

I'm gonna go movie to movie and see what happens.

And then, that script came my way and,

you know, it was really well written,

and I thought it was very interesting,

and I actually thought that it couldn't go very long,

cause I thought, oh it's about aliens.

You're gonna see the alien

or you're not gonna see the alien.

If you see the alien, it's over.

If you don't see the alien, you're gonna get frustrated,

give up on it.

So I thought maybe we do a year.

Maybe we do half of a year.

Maybe I just shoot the pilot.

Maybe it never gets on the air, but sure.

I needed to make money.

And I thought, okay,

we'll do this.

They, they had two hour actors coming in to read

for my character.

And then they had three actresses coming

in to read for Scully.

And we were all just kind of hanging

out in a building on the Fox lot

cause they'd, they'd bring us

in and they'd do chemistry reads with us.

You know, I'd read with this actress.

The other guy would read, you know, just mix and match.

So they were just trying to check out what they had

and Jillian and I just ended up like

sitting on the staircase, running lines.

I think that happened.

That's kind of what I remember.

And they asked me, you know, who,

cause they cast me first,

and they said, who, who's your choice?

And I said, no, no don't make me.

I said, I don't wanna be responsible

for an actress getting or not getting a job.

They were like, excuse my language,

this is what they said,

don't be such a pussy.

And I said, well, that's what you get, I'm not gonna say.

After the show got really well known,

it was very hard to just stay low and do your work

and not try to respond to what you were seeing

out in the world, responses to the show.

In some ways it becomes harder to do your job once

you're, you hear all the voices, you know, talking about it.

But at that point, nobody was talking about it.

So even though I didn't want it to go very long at first,

cause I thought I wanted to do movies,

once you, once you do something you're ,

well my ego got involved and I was like,

I want this show to win.

You know, I want this show to keep going.

The other part, which was like just this incredible kind

of global phenomenon of the show

that would've started probably around the third year.

Yeah, that becomes difficult to navigate while you're doing,

like I said, I mean, you just,

now you're aware of what people are saying about it or

about you and, you know, you,

you try not to hear those voices in your head

when you're working but sometimes it gets difficult not to.

And then after a certain point of time, you know,

after 5, 6, 7 years of it, yeah, then it starts to creep in.

They're like, oh my God, now this is all I'm,

it's all I'm ever gonna do.

This is all I'm ever gonna be known for.

But that's just, that's just, like, a low level panic,

that's,

it's unfortunate.

It's a waste of energy,

you know, if I could go back and talk to myself, I'd say

don't even give it a second thought,

you just do your work, keep doing your work.

I take it you found your were-lizard.

Yeah, it turns out it wasn't a man who turns

into a lizard, it's a lizard who turns into a man.

I don't see the difference.

That's the point, Scully, there is no difference.

Both scenarios are equally foolish.

At that point, when we come back,

Jillian and I, Mitch and I,

you know, any other actor on that show, I've known for

20 years at that point,

it's not really difficult to

accept that into your consciousness when you're playing it.

Yes. I'm playing the character.

But when I look across, I'm looking at Jillian,

or I'm looking at Mitch, it's not hard to, I've got 20 years

with that person.

It's not it that, you read it.

You feel it.

If you let it happen, it's just there, so

that's, that's easy.

[Walking in Memphis by Marc Cohn playing]

♪ Put on my blue suede shoes. ♪

I know that hand.

It was in the Fall 1973 Bulova watch catalog.

You're JP Prewitt,

the world's greatest hand model.

Once upon a time.

He had sent the script to

Téa, my wife at the time, Téa Leoni,

and for a part, and I think I saw the script lying around

and I said, what's that?

And she said, oh, that's Ben Stiller movie

they want me to do.

And I was like,

how come they don't want me to do a Ben Stiller movie?

I wanna do a Ben Stiller movie.

So I was like, let me, let me read it.

And so I read it.

I don't know if I knew Ben yet.

Maybe I did, but I got in touch with him somehow.

And, and, and I said, hey, I wanna be in your movie, and

they got back to me, he got back to me and said,

you can do one of these two roles.

You can play his brother, the role that Vince Vaughn plays,

or you can be the, the hand model guy.

And I was like, oh, clearly I wanna be the hand model.

I wanted to have no hair and to be somewhat overweight.

I'm so uptight.

We went to the whole trouble of getting myself a piece

made like a, a bald wig.

And it ended up being not very different,

you know, I, I wanted to be like ball all the way

and, like, I have a long ponytail,

just like a real conspiracy dude.

And it ended up being, I mean, I, I doubt you can even

tell it's a piece.

I mean, it's, it's not that different.

It was gray, but it wasn't that different.

And then I wore like fat pads.

I'm not sure if that's even recognizable,

but that was my conception for that.

That was my aesthetic for that.

I had reams of, like, expositional dialogue.

And then, you know, I, I tell Derek everything

that's happened in the world and, and why it's male models.

And then he says,

But why male models?

You serious?

I just, I just told you that.

I think that's the only improv moment,

the rest is, you know,

it's, it's written, it's like, I'm, like, just

talking the whole time.

And God knows there was a ton of pre-production and

that, all that fashion and stuff, and Ben was super hands on

with all that stuff.

Like that was a heavy conceptual, visual look

and a visual style of, of the film making.

And I think those decisions had been made,

that heavy lifting had been done before.

I mean that that's a tough lift, to be Derek Zoolander

and to, and to direct that film.

Models don't think for themselves,

they do as they're told.

That is not true.

Yes, it is Derek.

Okay.

Market for say, I don't know,

adult diapers and some poor incontinent soul walked by,

who obviously needed them a lot more than I did,

I would surrender those diapers.

Good to know, asshole.

Everything okay?

No, this guy's being a total dick.

He's trying to steal my tampons.

The fuck's wrong with you?

Why do you wanna steal a woman's tampons?

I wasn't trying to steal her tampons, I was trying to buy-

The reason that project

was attractive me at first was

because I had been wanting to do comedy.

If I was gonna go back to television

I didn't wanna play a detective, or a cop, or,

or law enforcement guy, certainly wanted to stay away

from science fiction.

I was longing for, like, the comedies

of the seventies and the comedies of the time,

I don't know, what is this, 2007?

I don't know, you'd have to look at the box office,

but it's a lot of Jim Carey,

it's a lot of Ben, it's maybe Steve Carell at that point,

I'm not sure.

I don't say this to denigrate any of them,

they're fantastic, but, but they're like childish.

They're like, they're like, or do you say nerd?

I mean, I don't know.

It's, it's, it's a different kind

of a comedy it's like, it's not Warren Beatty,

it's Jim Carey.

So I'm looking at, not to say I'm Warren Beatty either,

but I'm looking at those kind of comedies.

How can I do that?

Where's that? It's not in the movies.

I'm not seeing it.

Oh, look at this thing.

Wow, that's an adult guy.

He's having adult situations.

He's being funny in a way that's not goofy and childish.

Maybe he's immature, but he's not a, he's not a man-child.

You know, all these guys were like,

these were like man-child parts.

I didn't want to go back to TV again, but

I gotta do this guy, cause this is what I wanted to do.

This is the kind of comedy I wanted to do.

And the fact that it was

diametrically opposed to,

or on the other side of the spectrum to Mulder was,

was a bonus, you know, in my mind.

He's a truth teller, you know, he's a, to his own detriment,

he just speaks his mind all the time.

And that's always fun.

I mean that, cause that doesn't really exist in life.

You know, X-Files, like I said, action,

painstaking, long hours,

little bits, little bits, little bits.

In Californication, it was looser,

somewhat improvisational, not really, but just quicker.

Not a lot of attention given to the visuals,

you know, it was really, it's all

about the feeling, and the performance,

and the actors, really.

And I, that was, to me, that was like,

this is what I wanted, like,

let's do the human part of this.

People remember Hank.

I mean, I prefer that people know my name, my actual name,

you know, if they want to yell a name at me,

but, you know, I'll take Hank or Mulder, right?

It works.

We're here to see about the Porsche, okay?

You're selling, Rick's looking to buy,

we set this up last night, remember?

Yes, I remember now.

Can we reschedule?

I've got a comatose stripper in my bed.

See, Rick, the last couple times

she was out all night, she was out with you, so

Get the hell away from me, man.

You hear me? Just,

[banging on door]

Ah, she just, I, I don't know, she took off.

By herself?

This guy that I'm playing, he's kind of my age at the time,

so he's maybe 50, and

that means he was born in 1919,

right?

So I was like, oh, this is a different cat.

You know, this is not a modern guy, you know,

and he's a cop, but he's gonna have to have his mind opened

by this show, by what, what he goes through.

He's gonna have to come face to face with America in 1969.

And I was like, that's a great journey.

And it goes against a lot of who I am.

So when I say this is not who I am, that's not

necessarily something that's gonna make it difficult.

It's something that made it attractive at that point.

If we're just talking about TV, to go

from, like, Californication,

whereas you got anything goes guy,

and now all of a sudden you're playing a button

down LAPD cop, you know?

So if I was going to react to Mulder by going to Moody,

then I was reacting to Moody by going to Aquarius,

it was like, it was interesting to me to go do this guy now.

I like John McNamara, who was doing the show,

a lot, he's a friend now.

And I thought we made a great show.

And I think we had,

it was right at the time Netflix was starting,

and I think we probably should have been on Netflix,

but instead we went on NBC,

which said they wanted to have, like, cable worthy kinds

of dramas, but I'm not sure,

I'm not sure that was the right spot for it,

cause I think we got two years out of it,

which was nice, but I would've, we had more story to tell.

I mean, I know if we had two more years,

we really could have gotten somewhere interesting, I think.

That's a, that's a bit of an emptiness to me on, you know,

if I look back on stuff that I've done,

like, that, that's a bit of a miss.

I wish I could have done more.

Would you please be careful?

It's a Martin.

It's a knockoff.

Nobody was here.

[Off-Screen] Thanks, Mikey.

Ji-yoon?

Yeah.

The, the door was open.

Do you always leave your door open?

Never had a problem before.

That's why I love it here.

Amanda Peet, who's the creator of The Chair,

she was on the X-Files second movie.

And then we did a play together here

in the city and she just called out of the blue.

Probably last January or something and said,

hey, I want, I'm doing this show.

And I was like, oh you're doing,

that's fantastic, she created the show,

I was like, oh, you're writing, that's great.

She's really smart.

I was just really happy she was,

you know, leading something.

And she said, I want you to come and play,

you know, David Duchovny.

And I said, well, what does that entail?

And she said, well kind of

like what you done on Larry Sanders, where you're playing,

like, an exaggerated, pompous version of yourself.

You're kind of, you know, everything is kind of true,

like, you're a writer and you're a musician, but you,

you want to take this job at this university only to, like,

get your PhD given to you rather than having to work for it.

And at first I thought, well, let's do this,

but let's change the name of the guy.

And then she said, no,

I think it works better if it's you, your name and I,

and then eventually I was like, yeah, I think you're right.

So that was it.

And then she was just super cool, putting my books all

over the set, so it just became

like a running joke of the whole season.

And I, I really had no idea it was gonna be, had those kind

of legs for the season.

I did one day at work in Pittsburgh on the whole show.

I had a wonderful time working

with Sandra Oh and with Amanda,

and was just happy that it all worked out for her.

I've been thinking recently about finishing it, you know,

and filing for my PhD.

Dr. David Duchovny. Maybe too much.

When I first started to write songs, there was a lot

of 'em, like, they just came tumbling out and then,

the first two albums probably harvested those songs.

So there were none left, you know?

So these were, these are songs that I wrote

after, like, that initial, oh,

teaching myself how to write a song, all that stuff.

Maybe the first two albums are

more cohesive, emotionally and philosophically.

And they represent the time when I started to write songs.

And these are more representative

of where I'm at right now, I think.

You have your whole life to write your first album

and you got a year to write your second one.

So it's like, that's what I felt like this time.

Cause I had my whole life and that kind of made two albums.

I had enough to make two and then I just had whatever,

whatever time I've, I've taken to make this one.

So it's, it's, it's a, it's an interesting process,

cause all of a sudden you're like, okay,

I'm mining a different area now, you know,

I'm mining a different area.

The Bubble represents

we're, we're doing, like, an action franchise

within the movie.

It's almost like The Fast and The Furious,

but there are cliff beasts.

They're almost like dinosaurs, but you know that

that's what, we silly actors, Pedro Pascal, Fred Armisen,

Keegan-Michael Key,

you know, we're all tired of one another,

we've, we've done, you know, 10 of these movies,

and now we've come back during COVID to get

into a bubble of life and make this movie.

And we're very sick of one another.

And at some point we try to escape the bubble of the movie.

And the interesting thing, for Judd, anyway,

I think is that the parts of the movie

that are Cliff Beasts, this franchise,

they gotta look at like, as good as those movies,

they gotta look that good.

And so Judd's never really worked in that area

where heavy CGI stuff.

And he's just been sending me

like the CGI stuff and it looks, it looks, it looks like one

of those movies, it looks like, I,

I never say Jurassic Park,

we never say Jurassic park, but you know, it, it

it kind of looks great.

I think that's really important.

You know, that's gonna make the movie that much funnier

that the Cliff Beasts part of the movie is, like,

can go toe-to-toe with the actual franchise type movies.

I never felt good where I was.

I, I always just felt like, what's next?

That's a disease, you know, it's like an actor disease,

or a artist's disease

but that's the mindset it's, yeah,

so I'm doing The X-Files, what's after that?

I don't know.

So I was always thinking what's next, and,

maybe not enjoying where I was at as much as I could have.