David Duchovny Reveals What Bothered Him About 'The X-Files'originally appeared onParade. ActorDavid Duchovnyis opening up about filmingThe X-Files. Entertainment Weeklyreported that Duchovny shared his "pet peeve" about working on the spooky procedural, which ran for 11 seasons, on a July 2025 episode of his podcastFail Better.While speaking to his guestBonesactressEmily Deschanel, Duchovny said he often noticed inconsistencies in the show's scripts, specifically regarding his character, FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder. "It was a bit of a pet peeve of mine when I was doingX-Files, not so much the other shows that I've done, but, as withBones, it's episodic, but every episode is pretty high drama. It can be life and death," said Duchovny during the podcast episode. "Sometimes the directors would come on and they'd know they had a great script and [since] this was on theX-Files, this could happen, you know? Like, 'Holy s**t, this is a great script,' and they really wanted to kill it. Those guys were dangerous. So often they would say, 'We've never seen Mulder like this before,' and I'd say, 'Yeah, like 10 other times we've seen Mulder like this before.'" He then provided an example that showed some of the inconsistencies with Mulder's character. He said during the production of Season 1, Episode 12, ("Fire"), he pointed out that it didn't make sense for Mulder to be intensely afraid of fire because he didn't have a reaction to a burning building in the pilot episode, which aired in 1993. "I remember like in the middle of the episode, I had this thought. I I think I went up to [director]Chris Carter, who wrote that episode, I believe, and I said, 'Didn't Mulder and Scully watch a building burn down in the pilot? I think Mulder was fairly cool with it, you know, it didn't bother him,'" said the actor while recording the podcast episode. "It's like this kind of stuff, you know where you're going, you're kind of the curator of the character and sometimes you have to go, 'I can't actually do that.'" Duchovny and Carter, who createdThe X-Files, discussed their working relationship in a June 2025 episode ofFail Better. While recording the episode, Duchovny and Carter acknowledged they didn't always have the best relationship. Duchovny suggested issues arose when he left the series following its seventh season. "I realized later that was a difficult thing to do. Even though you might have been as tired as I was. Or wanting to move on as much as I was. But I consider myself a team player so I always felt like a bit of an abandonment, not by you but of you, in that sense," said Duchovny to Carter. Carter agreed that he and the actor "had a parting." "I don't want to say [we were] mortal enemies, but it was a difficult time. But it was resolved," said Carter. David Duchovny Reveals What Bothered Him About 'The X-Files'first appeared on Parade on Jul 13, 2025 This story was originally reported byParadeon Jul 13, 2025, where it first appeared.
