2022/06/07 - David talks with chief film critic Ann Hornaday

WP Subscriber Exclusive: David Duchovny, Actor & Author

By Washington Post Live
June 7, 2022 at 3:00 p.m. EDT



Actor and best-selling author David Duchovny talks with Washington Post chief film critic Ann Hornaday on Tuesday, June 7 at 3:00 p.m. ET about his latest novella, “The Reservoir,” which he was inspired to write while living through the pandemic quarantine.

David Duchovny

Actor & Author, “The Reservoir: A Novella”


David Duchovny


The Washington Post

David Duchovny on one of his favorite moments from ‘The X-Files’

Washington Post Live

When we first got nominated for a Golden Globe, I think that was maybe the second year of the show, we were still up in Vancouver… We were aware that the show was doing well, but we weren’t kind of in Hollywood with it. We were just working 14 hours a day with our heads down… I just remember being so shocked, and like, ‘Oh my God, people like us.’… It may seem ridiculous in retrospect but I just remember thinking, ‘God dammit we did it, we’re good.’” – David Duchovny

David Duchovny on how 9/11 and the pandemic inspired ‘The Reservoir’

Washington Post Live

“There’s been two events in my lifetime that were cataclysmic: 9/11 and the pandemic, and it’s very instrumental in the story, the kind of outreach that occurs after these cataclysm, social outreach that happens to make connections with other people or to say, ‘Hey, I get it now, I get what’s important in life, it’s not chasing the dollar, it’s not chasing fame or achievement or whatever, it’s family, it’s the love of those close to me.’” – David Duchovny

Transcript: WP Subscriber Exclusive: David Duchovny, Actor & Author

By Washington Post Live
June 7, 2022 at 10:09 p.m. EDT

MS. HORNADAY: Welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Ann Hornaday, and this is a subscriber exclusive. Today’s guest is award‑winning author, actor, and director, David Duchovny, who is here to talk with us about his new novella, “The Reservoir.”

Think back to more than two years ago when so many of us were quarantining at the beginning of the pandemic. David has penned a new mystery that is relatable on so many levels during this tough time, and the book is only the latest in a series of award‑winning books that he's written.

Welcome, David Duchovny.

MR. DUCHOVNY: Oh, thanks for having me. Nice to meet you.

MS. HORNADAY: It's great to meet you too. We're glad you're here.

I didn't read this book; I inhaled this book. This is‑‑it is just‑‑it's a deep dive in more ways than one, and I really want to stay away with what happens in it because it is so compressed and so concentrated, and every little moment matters. And I don't want to‑‑I don't want to deny readers the pleasure of that discovery. So I'm going to sort of work around the edges, if you don't mind.

MR. DUCHOVNY: Well, have a great time. Thank you for having me on. Good night.

[Laughter]

MS. HORNADAY: Yes, okay. Anyhoo, but we can start‑‑so I will sort of work around the edges, and one of‑‑I guess one way to come into this is through your main character who is this‑‑as the intro said, this former Wall Street investment banker named Ridley, and we're catching him at a moment of his life when he is very introspective and gazing out of his window on to the Reservoir in Central Park in New York.

But tell me a little. Who is he? And tell me how he came to you.

MR. DUCHOVNY: Well, the kind of inspiration for the whole caper was I would look out the window and take time lapses of sunrises myself at the‑‑during the pandemic, and I just started to conceive of this idea that maybe in one of those time lapses, I'd see flashing lights and that that would be like "Rear Window" or there'd be, you know, Rapunzel, some damsel in distress reaching out across the moat of the park to make a connection to this lonely person, and then I just decided that that lonely person was going to be one of these guys. And I imagined it was a Wall Street guy, one of these guys who has thought, you know, he has an artistic soul, but he's never‑‑he's never indulged it. He's never had the chance to be an artist, one of these guys who thinks they're an artist because they own a lot of art, and it began kind of as a satire of this kind of acquisitive, money‑centered consciousness.

And then, you know, I learned over the past writing that it's a difficult position to be in, at least for me to be a satirist, because I tend to fall for even the villains in my stories. So that's what happened with Ridley as I began to write about his interior life, because I knew I had a general kind of an action that I was going to follow that he was going to, you know, make contact with this mystery person across the park, and since it's during the pandemic, that there might be consequences from physical contact.

So I knew. I saw that arc even when I was beginning, but I didn't know that I was going to kind of not‑‑you know, not fall in love with Ridley but fall for him as a suffering human being and treat him more than just an object of satire, which is what I began as.

MS. HORNADAY: Yeah. That's so fascinating because you can detect some traces and some artifacts of that satirical voice because often this book is very funny in this very observant, kind of wry New York way, but‑‑and I think it's interesting too that you did‑‑that you made him a banker. So there are echoes of the last sort of tragic period in New York's history, which was 9/11, and that that was‑‑that's kind of in his consciousness as well.

MR. DUCHOVNY: That was a complete either example of me being open enough to the smarter nature of my own unconscious or me just being lucky because I had no idea that 9/11 was going to figure into this story at all or‑‑I mean, maybe I could have thought that because there's been two events in my lifetime that were cataclysmic, 9/11 and the pandemic. And it's very‑‑it's very instrumental in the story that the kind of outreach that occurs after these cataclysms, social outreach that happens, to make connections with other people or to say, "Hey, I get it now. I get what's important in life. It's not‑‑it's not chasing the dollar. It's not chasing fame or achievement or whatever. It's family. It's the love of those close to me, and we all say that when these things happen. We say that we learned this lesson, and then we forget it quite quickly, and that's always been something that I wanted to look at, I guess, and that's something that Ridley looks at.

And in the book, it's kind of symbolized by, you know, the joke with the bear and the man who might be a bear, and the idea that that kind of deep unbearable‑‑I don't mean that pun. Just in this moment, I guess I do. But that unbearable love that one has for one's children or one's loved ones is so dangerous in a dangerous time because of loss and sickness and death. How do you live with it? How do you live with the intensity? How do you express that intensity every day? You can't. You kind of have to suppress it, and then the joke, it becomes, you know, the bear will either kill you or fuck you. Forgive me for putting it that way, but it's a joke, and it's a joke that I like.

And I forget what your question was. I think I kind of answered around it, but‑‑

MS. HORNADAY: No, you didn't. No, you answered. You answered it very directly and very articulately and‑‑

MR. DUCHOVNY: Until the end.

MS. HORNADAY: No, that was‑‑it was‑‑you nailed it. You stuck the landing, as you always do, as only you can.

You know, it occurred to me in a‑‑I think you know that one.

MR. DUCHOVNY: Oh, wait, wait. I knew where I was going. I'm sorry. I knew where I was going. I'm sorry. Wall Street. You said Wall Street. That was your question I didn't answer.

So I was talking about the unconscious. So, when I‑‑I just made him a Wall Street guy because I wanted to satirize that consciousness, and then I didn't know that 9/11 was going to be thematically important to this book. And then when I got to that point where I started writing about, you know, the two cataclysms, 9/11 and the pandemic, I was like, oh, okay. I'm glad. He could‑‑he was there. He was there at 9/11. He was actually right near the Towers, and it became, okay, that's‑‑that's why I made him a Wall Streeter, but I didn't know that at the beginning.

MS. HORNADAY: It's so fascinating, and again, I wanted to talk a little‑‑I'm interested in why you chose the novella. It's such a specific form, and it's sort of a lost form, and we don't really see them anymore. So tell us a little bit about how you‑‑and clearly, you were inspired by the work of Borges and Thomas Mann and, you know‑‑who Thomas Mann gets name‑checked in the book along the way, but tell us‑‑

[Laughter]

MS. HORNADAY: Tell us a little bit about that form and what attracted you to it.

MR. DUCHOVNY: Well, I think it chose me. I thought I was writing a short story, and then it got longer. I had never written a short story. I thought, okay, I haven't‑‑you know, my book came out a year ago, and I'm not starting‑‑I haven't started a new one. I should write something. I'll write a short story. I've never done that, and then I'll try to sell it to magazines, whatever one does with a short story these days.

And then it became this ungainly kind of length that is not publishable in magazines or elsewhere. So I was with this kind of tweener, you know, 125‑page thing, and they call it a "novella." I never‑‑I never set out to write a novella, a novelette, a novelsicle. I could come up with other diminutive names for it. But Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice," I think it's called a novella. I'm not sure. Maybe it's called a short story, but it's one of my favorite works of literature, obviously. And that was, you know, the main inspiration, at least the main literary inspiration or precursor of this book, where you have a man, a middle‑aged man kind of rekindling his interest in passion in a plagued city, where it can be very dangerous.

MS. HORNADAY: Indeed. And I picked up‑‑if you'll forgive me, I picked up notes. You know, it's like a fine wine. I picked up "Grace Notes" of Ballinger‑‑Ballinger and Fitzgerald with the "Blinking Light" and even‑‑and even Virginia Woolf and Joyce, you know, with the conscious, that sort of modernist evocation of consciousness and this stream of consciousness that you get to.

MR. DUCHOVNY: So all very possible. I mean, I can't‑‑I can't claim that I'm guilty of ripping any of them off, but I'm sure I am just because those were writers that I studied pretty deeply in college and graduate school. So I think they're part of my verbal DNA or writer consciousness DNA at this point, you know, beyond kind of saying I'm imitative or an homage. It's just that's kind of how I write, and I think it's due to having studied and fall in love with those, those writers and those kinds of books when I was a student.

MS. HORNADAY: Exactly. So I'm also fascinated by your journey because, as you just intimated, as a student, you were an English student. You went to Yale for grad studies in English. It felt like‑‑I think I read somewhere that you knew you would be a poet as early as 15. It felt like you were very much on the poet, literature track, and then‑‑and then, wait a minute, I'm going to go to New York and do acting. So tell us a little bit about that pivot and what brought that about.

MR. DUCHOVNY: Yeah. It's a little like what I was saying with Ridley's‑‑with my decision to make Ridley a Wall Streeter or anything like that. It's all‑‑my life, my career path has been largely unconscious choices, I think, or just kind of leaning into certain vectors.

I think I wasn't sure that I wanted to be an academic. So I had‑‑I had done a lot of work towards that, and I was in my mid‑20s, mid to late 20s already when I discovered really acting class, and in this place, you know, I was a kid who had been rewarded for intellectual achievement and to‑‑also probably rewarded to repress myself emotionally. And then I found a place where it was the upside‑down world where intellect was not rewarded and emotionality was, and there was a great kind of‑‑not only a freeing sense for me, but also an education. You know, I do believe that there's‑‑there's an intellectual education, and there's an emotional education, and I think that that's what I embarked upon at that point.

And it just so happened that I got kind of caught up and a little competitive and wanted to get work. I didn't have a career anywhere. I was 27, 28 years old. I am sure I started feeling some pressure to get my ass in gear, and so I just threw my ambition into acting at that point.

MS. HORNADAY: Was it because you were coming from such a strong intellectual tradition and culture just personally and also temperamentally, did you need to kind of resist the temptation to intellectualize? Were you kind of deconstructing scripts as literature rather than finding the emotional way in? Was that kind of a different muscle that you had to develop?

MR. DUCHOVNY: That's really an interesting question because I think probably, but I think I was always a very, very emotional person. I just wasn't in the habit of expressing it, and it took a while for me just to feel comfortable using those muscles. They had never‑‑or avenues. They'd never really been used.

And I think to answer your question more specifically, later on, when I did "The X-Files," at that point, you know, I had left plot behind. As a graduate student, you know, the last thing you do is walk into a class and talk about what happened in a book. That's not important. It's beside the point for a graduate student. When you're making television or movies or writing thrillers, potboilers, what have you, plot is king, and plot was king of "The X-Files."

And it took me two or three years to open my eyes and go, "Oh, I can live in a world with plot." You know, I had banished plot from my consciousness, which was, I think, a terrible mistake. It's almost like banishing emotionality. It's like‑‑because plot is satisfying. Plot is‑‑there's something deeply necessary in humans that love a plot. There aren't that many. I guess there are books that give you all the plots or whatever, but we love a story. And I had lost that love, and I'm not blaming anyone or graduate school or whatever, but you focus so specifically on the language, on what's not being said, going, you know, sociopolitical critiques of the work, anything but the plot, really.

And I fell in love with plot again, and it was so lucky for me that I don't think I could have actually‑‑people think I became a writer because I went to Yale. I think I became a writer because I got to go to the school of "The X-Files" for a while and just go, hey, that's‑‑that's a good story. Duh. You know, like I don't have anything smart to say about it. I just liked it.

MS. HORNADAY: Right. And that's good. And that's good enough.

MR. DUCHOVNY: It's enough, and now I see, you know, the good plots are‑‑and what I've realized talking about this book a little bit, which isn't necessarily plot‑heavy, but, you know, I think that myself as a writer, I write stories. Now I like stories, and I write stories kind of to find out what is the emotion underneath it. What is the unsaid thing that I'm trying to say by hanging it on this story? And in this case, it's the father‑daughter love, you know, the father‑daughter fissure that's haunting Ridley in this book.

And I did not know that either. You know, I didn't know that. Like I said, "Rear View"‑‑the story came to me plot‑wise. "Rear Window," "Death in Venice," okay. I got a‑‑I know where I'm hanging this guy. I know where he's going to hang out, and then as I wrote it, as I got to almost the very end, I was like, oh, it's‑‑it's his broken heart here about his daughter, and that's the‑‑he's looking for the key to all mysteries, all conspiracies, you know, and really, the key to his mystery is his daughter. It's small, and it goes back to the themes of what I was speaking about earlier, which is, you know, these cataclysms remind us that, you know, as we're talking about the ballots and we're talking about it's a false‑flag operation and all this crap, conspiracy stuff, the real conspiracy is always a very small rupture of some kind of love, I think, you know, if that makes any sense.

MS. HORNADAY: It makes total sense, and as just on a personal note, I lost my father earlier this year, and it rang absolutely true. It just rang absolutely true. So you get to something very deep and very real and sort of ambush in a good way and the best way possible, the reader.

And, you know, you mentioned Ridley and his daughter, and because you're working in this concentrated form, everything matters, every choice, word choice, and especially names. And so I'm curious about the names Ridley‑‑and his daughter's name is Coral. Could you tell us a little bit how you came to those names‑‑

MR. DUCHOVNY: Yeah.

MS. HORNADAY: ‑‑and what they mean to you?

MR. DUCHOVNY: I never like to throw away a name, you know. They are precious in books.

Well, Ridley, I know a guy named Ridley for years, a friend of mine, and that's his last name. And we just call him "Ridley," and I always liked Ridley. I loved Ridley Scott. I love that it's a riddle. It was like the Riddler. It was a question, you know, because this man was somehow unknown to himself.

And Coral to me was something that keeps growing, something that is submerged under water and‑‑that is an ecosystem unto itself, existing deep below the surface. So to hit the nails on the head, that's what I was going for.

I hope anybody that hears that forgets it as soon as I said it.

MS. HORNADAY: No, it's lovely. It's just‑‑I just‑‑it's always so interesting to me.

So you had mentioned earlier, you know, you have that kind of scaffolding, and then even you were a little bit surprised about where it ultimately went and what the themes ended up being. So I guess I'd like to ask you just about your personal. You intimated that you did have your own view of the Reservoir. You were experiencing a lot of those same feelings we were all experiencing during pandemic, but just how personal is this for you?

MR. DUCHOVNY: You know, everything I do is extremely personal, but it's not confessional. I have very little interest in writing a memoir or in confessing anything specific or writing about anything specific that either happened to me or my family. I don't see the art in that. I don't see the‑‑I don't see the benefit of it. I guess I'm from a different age. I just feel a little‑‑here's a literary word. I feel a little icky about talking about those kinds of things head on.

I value privacy, maybe not secrecy, but I value privacy. So there's‑‑I will say this. You know, I have two children, you know, and if my son were to read this, he'd go, "Hey, what the fuck? You know, where am I?"

MS. HORNADAY: [Laughs]

MR. DUCHOVNY: And I love them equally. So, with my‑‑with my daughter, a couple of things happened with her. I mean, the kind of penultimate realization for Ridley of having taken his daughter out in the water and exposed her to rough water when he should have known better being a lifeguard and all that, that's just taken right from my life. And I can talk about it because it has a happy ending, but, you know, it's just one of those archetypical moments where dad is showing off, you know, take you into the deep water, daughter, and then this big set came in. And I just grabbed onto my daughter, and we got whipped around for, you know, what felt like an eternity, but it was probably 30 seconds. I kept on pulling her under the waves and pulling her under the waves, and after they passed, she was like, "What were you doing? You were dunking me. I was fine," you know, but I was terrified that if I let go of her that I'd never find her again. And that's haunted me. I know it's a silly moment, but to‑‑exactly what happened to Ridley is we‑‑I didn't let her know, you know, that I was scared because I thought, well, I didn't want to confess that. I didn't want to confess your father is an idiot, your father is‑‑your father didn't think enough. Your father didn't plan enough. Your father took a chance that was‑‑that was wrong, you know. So she‑‑we left it at like, oh, I was roughhousing with her, you know.

And then I remember going back, getting back to the shore, and my knees were‑‑I couldn't‑‑I just kind of sat, and she was like, "Hey, let's go." And I was like, "No. I'm just going to like sit here and get some sun. I'm good. I'm just enjoying‑‑I'm enjoying my day at the beach," but I was just thinking, "What kind of an ass are you? What kind of an ass are you?"

MS. HORNADAY: You know, who among us? Every‑‑I had experiences like that with my own parents which became‑‑because they all‑‑you know, the few of them that there were had happy endings. So then it becomes part of family lore.

MR. DUCHOVNY: [Laughs]

MS. HORNADAY: And now that I'm a parent, I have my own.

But that scene in the book, it's so vivid, and it's just that‑‑those jelly knee, you know, just that utter depletion and inability to function almost while you're processing that. I mean, it was just absolutely brilliant and real.

MR. DUCHOVNY: Yeah. Well that's‑‑

MS. HORNADAY: And I will say‑‑

MR. DUCHOVNY: That's the most personal‑‑yeah, go ahead. Sorry.

MS. HORNADAY: And it rings. It resonates that way.

But, also, I would say, you know, even though you kind of frame it that you were self‑protective in terms of not telling her how much danger you were in, you were protecting her too because that would have really undermined her whole feeling of safety. Right. So‑‑

MR. DUCHOVNY: Yeah. And in the book, it's Ridley questions himself of whose ass am I saving, mine or hers, by lying to her that, "Oh, yeah, I was just going around, and I was in control the whole time." Yes, that gives her‑‑it maintains, I think, a necessary illusion of the omnipotent father, and I think that's a good thing for a child to have up until a certain age. But it's also maintaining, you know, Ridley's kind of position as that guy, you know, for himself, and he questions the motive of why he needs to keep up that illusion.

But I would do it too, you know, and I would‑‑I would applaud somebody else doing that. I think it's important for kids to feel safe, and they don't need to know all the truth until they can handle it.

And there's a little of that in the book as well. As they're in the Reservoir, father and daughter, you know, he's going deeper, and at some point, he thinks she's not ready for this at this point in her life. And it's a symbolic dive at that point, and it's courting death as well. And he does it again, but instead of‑‑instead of holding onto her this time, he lets go.

MS. HORNADAY: So another inspiration that shows up throughout the novel is a Led Zeppelin song‑‑

MR. DUCHOVNY: Yep.

MS. HORNADAY: ‑‑called "Kashmir." Tell us how does that‑‑what does that song mean to you, and how did you decide to give it pride of place in this narrative?

MR. DUCHOVNY: Well, again, this is going to seem like it's a total autobiography, but "Kashmir" for years, mostly because I'm bad with phones, was my wakeup call for years. I could have‑‑I didn't know how to change it. I liked it. Most people would think that's a nightmare to wake up to, but it's very effective. I guarantee you that that beat is very effective of getting you out of bed or at least finding your phone to turn it off at that time of the morning.

MS. HORNADAY: [Laughs]

MR. DUCHOVNY: But I love the song, aside from using it as an alarm, and I had used an epigraph from "Kashmir" in the book and had used it right up until the point where I requested permission from the publisher and from Led Zeppelin, and they wanted $3,000.

MS. HORNADAY: Oh, hey.

MR. DUCHOVNY: I said I'll find‑‑I'll find another epigraph, and so I actually found an epigraph that has Robert Plant talking about "Kashmir" for free.

MS. HORNADAY: This is how they make their living, sir.

MR. DUCHOVNY: I think‑‑I think they've made their living. I don't think my $3,000 would have made a big difference, but, you know, as somebody who I write music and I make‑‑I make, you know, quote/unquote, art, and the idea that somebody can just reproduce my art for free, I get it. I mean, I don't‑‑I just felt cheap and didn't want to pay for it.

MS. HORNADAY: Sure.

MR. DUCHOVNY: Yeah.

MS. HORNADAY: Sure. And the Plant quote is fascinating too in its own right.

MR. DUCHOVNY: It is.

MS. HORNADAY: It's actually‑‑it was probably a little bit‑‑you know, that's something we haven't probably seen as much as the lyrics.

MR. DUCHOVNY: Right.

MS. HORNADAY: So it all worked out.

MR. DUCHOVNY: I had never seen it. I was like damn it.

MS. HORNADAY: Yeah.

MR. DUCHOVNY: I didn't want to pay for "Kashmir." Has anybody ever talked about "Kashmir?" I found that quote. I was like this might be even better.

MS. HORNADAY: [Laughs] That's great.

So, to that point about all these different art forms that you work in, how do you‑‑do you compartmentalize your creative life, and if so, how‑‑I mean, do you read other writers while you're writing, or do you try to kind of wall yourself off from other people's work, including scripts, or how does that all‑‑how does that all balance out?

MR. DUCHOVNY: Not scripts because scripts are‑‑they're a weird mongrel kind of a thing. I mean, they're‑‑you know, they're great if they're great, but they're not great literature. Have you ever‑‑

MS. HORNADAY: There's no danger of cross‑pollination.

MR. DUCHOVNY: "I'm going to‑‑I'm going to re‑read that script again." You know, I'm like‑‑

MS. HORNADAY: That's right, exactly. [Laughs]

MR. DUCHOVNY: That movie about 10 years ago, now all of a sudden, I get a script. I'm going to re‑read it. It doesn't‑‑it doesn't work that way.

So, no, I can read any script at any time, but I tend not to read fiction when I'm writing fiction.

In terms of making music, yeah. I'll be listening to music all the time and reading poetry, too, which helps me lyrically, can help me lyrically. You know, I‑‑especially with production, music production. I get ideas by listening to‑‑because I tend to listen to the stuff that I grew up listening to and love, and that's like the bedrock influence on me.

When I was talking earlier about‑‑you mentioned Woolf and those writers. They're the bedrock influence in literature, but, you know, Beatles, Petty, Stones, it's like in me. I don't need to listen to them. I'm already kind of, you know, in that area if I'm writing. So, if I want to be, you know, current or try to grow, it's really the production and the sounds, the different‑‑the different production sounds, you know, the last 10, 15, 20 years, which I know nothing about and don't like naturally gravitate towards, but if I sit down and I listen, I can go, "well, that's super interesting. I'd like to try something that sounds a little like that."

MS. HORNADAY: You know, that's fascinating that you mention production because we're exactly‑‑we were born in the same year, so we have those same sort of, I would imagine, cultural influences, and I feel like‑‑and "Kashmir" is another interesting choice because I think when it came‑‑I remember when it came out, it was like there was this‑‑there was this stigma about being overproduced. Remember? You know, like, oh, it's overproduced. Like, that was such a‑‑that was such a music snob thing to say about that.

But, of course, now in the fullness of time and with wisdom, we think, no, that's absolutely‑‑you know, like there‑‑there's over‑‑that just means it's badly produced, right? Like‑‑

MR. DUCHOVNY: [Laughs] Yeah, right.

MS. HORNADAY: There's something about the multi‑‑you know, the production values of those great pop songs we grew up with. It's just like yeah. Bring it.

MR. DUCHOVNY: Yeah. Well, there's‑‑you know, I think‑‑I think that originally the idea of overproduction was a sense of like, oh, they must be hiding the fact that they're bad musicians‑‑

MS. HORNADAY: Mm‑hmm.

MR. DUCHOVNY: ‑‑which is obviously not the case with Zeppelin, or, you know, this kind of false, you know, sense of ersatz, like it has to sound like‑‑you know, it has to sound human. It has to sound to be authentic. You know, this is inauthentic music because it's produced mechanically. It's not produced organically on the instruments that we grew up learning, but, you know, it always changes. Like, so you have to‑‑it's whatever strikes the ear, right? Like, the ear is very adaptive, I think, and falls in love with things, and so have I, as I've listened throughout my life to mostly pop songs. I'm not a‑‑I'm not a classical guy.

MS. HORNADAY: Well, David, we do have some audience questions that I want to make sure we get to. So I think I'll dive into a few right now. We have Barbara Davis from Ohio wants to know‑‑oh, I love this one. As a writer, I love this one. Does writing energize or exhaust you?

MR. DUCHOVNY: It energizes me. You know, afterwards, it exhausts me.

MS. HORNADAY: There you go.

MR. DUCHOVNY: On a deep, deep, like good exhaustion. Like, I've never done a triathlon‑‑I've done a triathlon. I've never done an Iron Man. Like, I can imagine like that kind of exhaustion, but while I'm involved in it, while I'm‑‑you know, if I'm in the midst of writing something long that's going to take months, I'm super energized, and I'm usually waking up. My mind is waking up, without the aid of "Kashmir" at like 4:30 in the morning or 5:00 in the morning, you know, and not sleeping. You know, just like my brain has been working, always working on it, even when I'm asleep. Just the most wonderful feeling to be fully engaged in something. So it's the engagement that makes me feel energized, and I long for it when I'm not that way. You know, when I'm not writing, I long for that kind of engagement.

MS. HORNADAY: Are you sort of taking notes and filing ideas away and kind of‑‑

MR. DUCHOVNY: Yeah.

MS. HORNADAY: Yeah, I know that feeling.

MR. DUCHOVNY: Yeah. Because I'm kind of, you know, stretched across different media, I'm always like, well, what is this thing here? How far do I want to take it? Do I want to‑‑do I want to write it up as a pitch and give it to another writer and see if we can make it a television show that I can act in or direct or product, or do I want to just horde this for myself and turn it into a book and maybe turn it into a movie? You know, so it's like I am taking notes and I'm thinking of‑‑again, I'm thinking of stories that appeal‑‑appeal to me but also give me the sense that there's an emotional secret underneath that plot unwinding that's going to be interesting to me.

MS. HORNADAY: Is it tempting because you are‑‑you know, you played a‑‑in "The Bubble," the Judd Apatow comedy, really hilarious‑‑and your character was really hilarious.

MR. DUCHOVNY: Thank you.

MS. HORNADAY: But you play this sort of quintessential, pretentious actor who rewrites the script to make it more politically serious and more substantive. Beyond that, the political piece, but as a writer, is it hard to resist that temptation to scribble on it and make it better and offer to rewrite?

MR. DUCHOVNY: Not really, because I think at first, when I was first acting, I thought‑‑and it was really out of weakness. I thought I'm going to put this in my words, you know, and this will be better in my words, and that was kind of a shortcut from not committing enough to the words ad they were and making them work. So, if I was doing these words and they weren't quite working for me or anybody else, I'd say, oh, screw it. You know, I'm just going to rewrite it, when, in fact, there's an integrity, a possible integrity‑‑I'm not saying it's always the case, but there's an integrity. And I have to assume that whoever wrote it spent some time doing it and that there's a rhyme and reason behind it, and my job as an actor is to make that come alive and not to change it.

MS. HORNADAY: Right. And that kind of gets back to trusting the story. It's like trusting that you sort of‑‑you have to have trust in this form, in this process, whatever‑‑whatever it is and commit. If you're committed, you're committed, and that's not bad.

MR. DUCHOVNY: Yeah. And it's like‑‑it's also knowing your job. You know, you're hired. You're hired to be the actor. You're not hired to be the writer.

I mean, there are some directors, writers that you work with that welcome it. They'll say, you know, "Let's work on this bit. Do you have any alts that you want to do? Do you want to improv with it a little bit?" and that's cool. But it's no longer my approach to say, "Hey, I write. Let me rewrite this."

MS. HORNADAY: I think that sounds like a wise course. I want to‑‑

MR. DUCHOVNY: Especially with Shakespeare. I tend not to write‑‑rewrite Shakespeare anymore, which is what I was doing. [Laughs]

MS. HORNADAY: I'm going to leapfrog to a couple. I know people are going to want to talk a little bit about‑‑more about "The X-Files." So there are two questions about "The X-Files," and I have one too. So I'll start with Roger Posiack from North Carolina who wants to know, what was your favorite memory from "The X-Files"?

MR. DUCHOVNY: You know, I have so many memories of it. I don't have a favorite memory, but there were important moments, and I do remember when we first got nominated for a Golden Globe‑‑and I think that was maybe the second year of the show. We were still up in Vancouver. And we were up in Vancouver, we were pretty removed from Hollywood, obviously geographically but also temperamentally. We were one of a few shows that were shooting up there, but we were kind of in a bubble.

And, you know, we were aware that the show was doing well, but we weren't kind of in Hollywood with it. So there was no‑‑you know, we were just working 14 hours a day and with our heads down, and it's going to make it seem like I'm into awards, and I guess I‑‑you know, I like an award as much as anybody else, but, you know‑‑and Golden Globes are whatever they are you know. But I just remember being so shocked and like, "Oh, my God, people are‑‑people like us." So it was really that moment. I was like, oh, I didn't know. I didn't know we were‑‑I knew people were watching, but I didn't know it was like this. And it was just I had a real sense of‑‑because Chris Carter called me and told me like at work, and I just remember thinking, so proud of us. You know, it's like the first‑‑it may seem ridiculous in retrospect, but I just remember thinking, "God damn it, we did it, you know. We're good."

MS. HORNADAY: Aw, that doesn't seem ridiculous. That's actually really moving.

Robert Butterfield would like to know what you think of the latest Washington, D.C. inquiries into UFO activity.

MR. DUCHOVNY: You know, this is going to be very telling about me, but I don't know anything about it. [Laughs]

I know that there was a‑‑I know there were some publications that were around it, but it's not‑‑I don't have a real personal interest in it.

I certainly‑‑if you showed me evidence of UFOs, I'd be as interested as the next guy, you know. I have a graphic novel that's kind of a science fiction, alien‑based thing coming out next November. So I guess I do have some interest in it, but it's really‑‑I hate to say this, but my interest is like allegorical or symbolic more than is it real, is it happening, where are they.

MS. HORNADAY: Understood, understood.

Well, I'd like to ask you my "X-Files" question, which is that "X-Files" came out‑‑I can't remember. It was the 1990s.

MR. DUCHOVNY: Right.

MS. HORNADAY: And it feels now, in retrospect, looking back, it ushered in‑‑well, we've always been fascinated by conspiracies, but that was sort of a high point of conspiracies culture. You know, "JFK" had come out, the movie, "JFK," "X-Files." There was a new sort of resuscitation of conspiracy as pop culture and entertainment, and now as we embark on tomorrow‑‑on Thursday night's hearings‑‑

MR. DUCHOVNY: [Laughs]

MS. HORNADAY: I just wanted to get your thoughts on that about that migration, if anybody could have ever seen that coming and just how you feel about it.

MR. DUCHOVNY: I did not, but I will say that Chris Carter saw it coming.

And, actually, I did a book about‑‑for this book last night with Chris, and somebody sent me a scene from "The X-Files" iteration that we did in 2016, and Joe McHale, the actor, has this, you know, speech that's right out of the QAnon stuff. And this is 2016, and I just‑‑I tipped my cap to Chris Carter, you know, in this case for seeing it all coming.

I didn't at all, because I don't go in that direction when I think, but I'm as‑‑I'm kind of a little unsettled by the fact that Mulder may be a poster for QAnon and that kind of stuff, and I never‑‑I never saw him that way. I saw him as a‑‑you know, he was always right. He was right about the conspiracies that he was uncovering, and I'm saddened by what I see out there and by what people claim to be believing.

But as I‑‑it kind of circles back to the book because‑‑because I think I do address the need for an answer, and I think that's at the heart of conspiracies because we want‑‑we want a bad guy or girl. You know, we want‑‑we want a villain. It's too hard to handle if you tell me the world is just a chaotic place where shit doesn't make sense and nature is brutal and the planet is dying and we can't do anything about it. I want to blame somebody for that. I get it.

I think if you're a mature person, you kind of sit down in that anger and that despair, and you go, "I can't‑‑I can't blame anybody. Maybe I can help. Maybe I can fight against it," but it's not my‑‑generally, it's not like Mr. Bad Guy who's doing it or a couple cabal of bad guys or whatever and certainly not pedophiles working out of Comet Pizza.

MS. HORNADAY: Mm‑hmm, yeah. Right. It's a contradiction because, like you said, there have been. It's not that there haven't been conspiracies. There have. We're just celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break‑in, and so we know that conspiracies are real. But it just feels like it's morphed into this weird fantasy.

MR. DUCHOVNY: Well, for me, because I got a lot of this when I was doing "The X‑Files." You know, people would ask me, "Is it real?" and I would always say, "Have you ever known anybody to keep a secret in your entire life? One person? Have you ever known somebody to successfully keep a secret? Now you're talking about hundreds, thousands of people keeping a secret that have global consequences. Do you really think that that's possible?"

MS. HORNADAY: We are approaching our own deadline here, and I wanted to talk a little bit about your acting life, and are you back? Is it sort of back to, quote/unquote, normal, pre‑pandemic normal, or what's‑‑

MR. DUCHOVNY: Kind of. I mean, the last year was very busy for me. I have another movie coming out on Netflix with Jonah Hill, Julia Louis‑Dreyfus, and Eddie Murphy, where I play‑‑Julia and myself play Jonah Hill's parents in a kind of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" scenario. Very funny. Kenya Barris wrote with Jonah and directed it. That's next.

I'm probably forget‑‑oh, yes. I did a comedy down in New Orleans called "The Estate," an independent film that I think is really funny, and it's starring Toni Collette.

So, yeah, I've been‑‑you know, after like taking a year off, you know, before and during the pandemic, maybe a year and a half, I've been quite busy the last year and a half since "The Bubble." And I like it. I do like it, and it's a‑‑the business has changed, and it's changing all the time. But, you know, the advent of the streamers have kind of changed the way you can address storytelling. So, for me as a writer and as a director and as an actor, it's interesting to think that my only two options are no longer 25 hours a year or 12 hours a year or a two‑hour story, but I can tell a story in eight hours. I could tell a story in ten hours. It can change the way you tell a story. It can change the kind of stories that you can tell well.

MS. HORNADAY: That's fantastic.

And I understand you are adapting one of your own books. Is that right?

MR. DUCHOVNY: Trying to, yeah. I mean, it's all‑‑it's all like I'm‑‑you know, it's independent filmmaking world of "Bucky F*cking Dent." You know, I hope to be shooting that quite soon, and then "Truly Like Lightning," I was adapting that as a series, but I think I'm leaning more back into that as trying to conceive of that as a two‑hour story. And that's one of those older‑type problems where you've got a long book. It's a bit of an epic, and how are we going to condense them in two hours? But I think we can, and I think we can really make that movie.

MS. HORNADAY: So you are going from being the solitary creator of those two pieces into this eminently collaborative medium. Are you alone doing those screenplays? When you say "we," how collaborative do you get, and how soon?

MR. DUCHOVNY: Very. Collaborative, you know, one could say lazy. I like to collaborate. It's one of the things that drew me into acting in the first place. It reminded me of playing sports, which was my‑‑team sports, which was my first love, really. So I love finding people who do things differently than I do and thinking about, oh, how would they‑‑how would they bring their talents to bear on what I've done already with this thing? So I told the story in novel form. I'm happy with it. I published it. I let it go. Now it's going to take on a new form, and I'm going to let other people engage in creating that form with me.

MS. HORNADAY: That's wonderful.

Well, unfortunately, we are out of time. We have to leave it there. David Duchovny, I cannot thank you enough for joining us today. This has been a wonderful conversation.

MR. DUCHOVNY: Well, this has been a real pleasure. I've enjoyed the conversation myself. Thank you.

MS. HORNADAY: Indeed. Thank you.

And thank all of you for joining us. If you would like to see what’s coming up on Washington Post Live, please head to WashingtonPostLive.com to see what is in store. You can register and find out more information about all of our upcoming programs.

For now, my name is Ann Hornaday. Thank you again for joining us.

[End recorded session]


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