Alf's X-Files: Gillian Anderson Interview
Last Updated: 23-June-96
Talk about an easy find! I open up the Sunday Telegraph's TV Extra and I find an interview
with Gillian Anderson (Agent Scully) by Michael Idato. Enjoy ...
It seems strange that in the woods just outside Vancouver, Canada, as a production crew set up the next shot on the set of The X-Files, Gillian Anderson is thinking about a childhood regret.
"I was thinking about this only the other day," she says, "There is only one thing that I regret and it is something that I can make up for eventually when I have the time.
"I didn't pay as much attention in school as I would have liked to," she declares, after a moment's thought. "I was a daydreamer, and there is a lot of history and geography and science I missed out on because I was in my head. And I regret that."
Gillian Anderson is small in stature, certainly smaller than the strident FBI agent Dana Katherine Scully, who marches, trenchcoat-clad into many out-of-the-ordinary situations.
Perched on a director's chair, there is no green room, no minders. No fussing, no star trip. Out in the Vancouver wilderness it's every man (or FBI agent) for themselves.
The set of The X-Files is a long way from Los Angeles; from the fake fame world of starched smiles and press releases in more ways than one.
Perhaps if Gillian Anderson were working in LA she would be an entirely different woman. Here, in the woods, she is refreshingly normal, candid, but intently focused. Free of LA's mental smog.
After three years as FBI Agent Scully, on the The X-Files, Anderson has been slimed, cocooned, chased, spooked, attacked, assaulted - and even abducted by extraterrestrials, though whether in fact little green men or the US Government were actually responsible for that one remains to unfold.
That The X-Files is a hit cannot be questioned. In countless countries, particularly Australia, the US and Canada, where it is made, the story is the same: an unqualified success both in terms of popular discussion and actual Nielsen ratings.
Yet it is that very success that Gillian Anderson insists she keeps far from her mind. If only because she needs to keep her focus clear, uncluttered by the hordes of fans, the merchandise, the conventions and (of course) the Internet.
"I do," she says, when asked if she has to shut out the external influences. "And I find that I have. And that's how I operate best I guess," she says, her voice trailing off.
"It's just too big," she declares after a moment, and laughs, perhaps at the enormity of her fame, perhaps that here, in the woods, she enjoys a rare moment of peace away from it.
"I need to concentrate on what's here in front of my face." She does admit she can't go anywhere. Anderson and her family (husband, and infant daughter Piper, a boisterously good humoured child who captivated all on the set earlier in the day with a small jog on the roadside) have cut down their commuting to LA, though motherhood is probably more responsible for that than the pressures of recognition.
"In a way that's par for the course, and in a way there are some feelings about it. I', more than happy to make kids happy, or make someone happy by signing an autograph; that's great.
"There are," she adds, "certain times when I fell it's more an invasion of privacy then others. But that's just something that I have to deal with."
Fame, she says, is something that she doesn't think about too often. "I'm not sure exactly what it means to me," she says. "I try not to think about it too much."
Perhaps the most striking factor in The X-Files is the extraordinary chemistry between its two stars: Anderson and David Duchovny.
Scarcely acquaintances before The X-Files, barely good friends now - though they work together they have both acknowledged they lead relatively separate lives - when they are on screen together, the sums add up.
"I think that not everyone has chemistry together," Anderson says, "and that's not something you can force. I think that (20th Century) Fox was very lucky to find two people who just had that.
"No matter what is going on, on the outside, no matter what moods we're in. It's just something that, when the cameras go on, we just have that.
"And that has contributed to the flavour of the show considerably and they're very fortunate in that respect as so are we."
During her three years on The X-Files, Anderson candidly says her skills as an actor have been tuned to the point that she can make the quick decisions needed in television.
And time, perhaps, is the only luxury the mantle of international TV star cannot get you. "At the beginning it was hard to get used to; to make such quick choices for television.
"In theatre you have time, in a film you more time than this at least. It was a very different thing and it took a while for my brain to latch onto making quick choices and being okay with it.
"In that way I have learned considerably." When Anderson first read the script for The X-Files, a pilot for television both she and Duchovny have said they were hesitant about, she admits to being impressed with the strength of Scully. "The first time, where Fox Mulder and Scully met, she stands up for herself. She stands right there and gives it to him and that was extremely attractive."
Anderson says she was also immediately drawn to the "intellectual repartee", conversations she likens to "mellow battles" where ideas were expressed, sentences clashed yet they remained respectful of each other.
The learning curve of three seasons on the show, dealing with new and extremely complex scripts each week, has helped turn the two-dimensional but nonetheless intriguing Agent Scully into a three-dimensional, broad character. "At the beginning Scully was much more sceptical than she is now," says Anderson. "She was fighting for her life and her career, she was thrust into this situation where she was sent to debunk the 'X' files, and keep and eye out on Mulder and report back to the FBI and she was very much a rookie.
"In time, she learned to develop her own opinion of the people that she worked for, and she got stronger. Think she's now much stronger. In the beginning she wanted to believe she was strong but sometimes she faltered."
Creating the extraordinary breadth of the character has obviously been thrilling for the actor; though her tone rarely changes from deliberate, and philosophical, she clearly enjoys the company of Scully, referred to in out conversation as a third, and very real, person.
"I think it's peeling back layers, but mostly on the part of the writes," she says.
"They give us what we work with, from week to week, and they show us where they want the narrative to go."
Suspension of disbelief is intrinsic to programs like The X-Files, whether it is accepting the subtle conspiracy theories laced into each script like a fine piece of cloth, or the more obvious episodes which are driven by things that go (more conventionally and without the assistance of alien DNA) bump in the night.
"Sometimes I read a script and it's obvious from early on that it's one where the suspension of disbelief has to develop strongly from page one. Some are more reality-based."
Anderson does admit - when she finally hangs up her trenchcoat and leaves Agent Scully behind, she will have difficulty watching herself playing someone new, or different.
On the subject of leaving the show, a rumour which gets a run every now and then, Anderson is firm in her commitment to The X-Files project.
"I have promised Chris (Carter) that I would stay with the project," she says. "I'm hoping it will go as long as it needs to go. That we don't over extend our welcome."
And as for speculation of a feature film? "Hopefully, eventually," she says. "It would be great. It would be great to be able to come back here, once every couple of years. To re-live these characters would be wonderful, because I know when the show ends it will be huge mourning process.
"I love Scully, I miss her during the hiatus and I start getting revved up when it's time to start work again, because I want to be with her again." But Anderson does say she and Scully are quite different, so much so she can shake off the mantle of her character in a moment. No long mourning process here, as long as she knows Scully isn't too far from her.
"I can goof around with other people right up to when we shoot," she ways, indicating perhaps for the first time that beneath the calm reserve there is something of a practical joker.
"If it's a scene that needs more from emotionally, I'll focus more. But we've been doing this long enough that we can fall into it at the drop of a hat.
"During the hiatus it's not a problem. When the show's not around any more, it's going to be hard not to have her in my life."
For this interested there's a properly formatted Word 6/7 version of this interview, also
done by me. Click here to download it.
