David Duchovny Admits to a Friendship Fail With X-Files Co-Star Gillian Anderson

David Duchovny said he had a “failure of friendship” with “X-Files” co-star Gillian Anderson when the hit sci-fi series was at its peak in the 1990s.

On a Tuesday episode of his “Fail Better” podcast in which he’s joined by Anderson, Duchovny admitted that he thought the “trickiest” part of their conversation would be addressing what he called his “failure of friendship.”

“There was a long time, working on the show, where we were just not even dealing with one another off-camera,” Duchovny said.

He admitted that he wasn’t sure how the conversation would go when it came to discussing the period when they didn’t speak to each other outside of work.

“There was a lot of tension,” he said. “Which didn’t matter, apparently, for the work cause we’re both f–king crazy, I guess. We could just go out there and do what we needed to do.”

Anderson agreed, noting that she and Duchovny did “not speak to each other for weeks at a time” outside of work, despite Fox Mulder and Dana Scully’s intense relationship on the series. “I mean, it’s crazy that we were able to present on camera, you know, the various feelings and emotions and attraction and all that kind of stuff,” she said.

Duchovny noted that they had an “immediate connection” when they were first cast in the Chris Carter-created series, but that they eventually drifted apart.

Anderson said she had recently started listening to his podcast: “I felt like I was learning more about you than I knew, more than I ever knew,” she explained.

“We know each other very deeply and yet we don’t know each other either in some weird way,” Duchovny added. “When you share a seminal kind of experience in your life — this huge success with the show that we had — only we know what it’s like to be in the center of that.”

“The X-Files” aired on Fox from 1993 to 2002. Duchovny left in Season 7 and Scully was paired up with “Terminator 2” star Robert Patrick. Mulder returned at the beginning of the ninth season. The series was rebooted for two short seasons in 2016 and 2018, with both Anderson and Duchovny returning as the iconic FBI agents.

Last year, Carter told TheWrap that Ryan Coogler had his blessing to helm a revival of the series and Anderson said she would consider reprising her role of Scully.