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It’s refreshing, when you see him on Zoom that – despite the years – David Duchovny still looks, sounds and generally feels exactly like David Duchovny. The man is still handsome, relaxed, cultured and gives a sly smile here and there. The now somewhat 65-year-old actor, who became a sensation as half of the paranormal investigation team on the 1990s Fox series X-Filesis here to promote the second season of his docuseries on the History Channel Declassified secretswhich details dark government programs, policies, and weapons across the decades.
But of course, we also asked him about his thoughts on Ryan Coogler’s upcoming reboot of X-Files As for Hulu, all the hype surrounding UFOs/UAPs and what they’re up to next.
So what excites you about Season 2 of Declassified secrets?
It’s because truth is stranger than fiction. You listen to these stories and you say, “Oh my God, I don’t have the imagination to make this stuff up. This has already happened.”.“So it goes from the ridiculous to the sublime, and it all comes down to human imagination and weakness and people doing the wrong things for the right reasons. That’s really what all the drama is about.”
What are examples of things that particularly surprised you when tackling the material this season?
How close do we get to nuclear Armageddon, and how many times? It’s like a Kathryn Bigelow movie[[Dynamite house]Last year, where you had what appeared to be a missile heading towards you, and what was your reaction? Do you eliminate the enemy or just try to continue life as we know it? There have been multiple examples of this throughout our history that we were not aware of. It makes you realize how much we depend on Him [somebody having] Decent governance at the top.
OK.
It makes you fear for our position now.
Did you make your years? X-Files Does it make you more skeptical or more open-minded when it comes to these kind of topics?
I didn’t really bring it home with me. It was never my interest to get into this matter X-Files. My thesis was titled “Magic and Technology in Contemporary American Fiction and Poetry.”.“My interest, since I was in my early twenties, was how magic — or knowledge, which is actually technology — was a field that had positive and negative morality. But once we get to Oppenheimer and the nuclear capacity to destroy the world, you really see the necessity of dealing with technology in an ethical way. And of course, now we have artificial intelligence, where we’re wondering how to encode what we think of as human morality into something that will be much more powerful than us.”
We’ve been lucky with nuclear weapons, because we haven’t used them unethically since World War II. The bitter truth is that every weapon ever created in human history has been used.
Well, at least, among the weapons we know of. I thought about your show yesterday after reports claimed the government’s Ghost Murmur technology was apparently used to help track down an Air Force officer who was shot down in Iran. It’s one of those things that sounds like science fiction – the ability to track heartbeats (Some doubt it’s real.)
It’s old Star Trek -There’s an episode where they have all the heartbeats of the people on the ship. Even in this show, Declassified secretswe have a pre-tech version of that, where there was a guy stranded behind enemy lines, and they used his knowledge of the golf course to get him where they needed him to go. I prefer this type of work rather than just using nuts and bolts [cleverness]rather than the latest technology.
We live in this strange moment where the idea of unidentified flying objects, or UAPs, is taking on a new and serious look. Having passed on a legacy X-FilesWhat has been your reaction over the last few years as this has intensified through congressional hearings?
I am not privy to any information. But my opinion is based on my consideration of human nature, which is: I don’t believe those conspiracies exist, because I’ve never seen two people keep a secret, let alone thousands of people in a government across generations. My sense of human nature is that if something is as world-shaking as contact with another civilization – an alien or something else – it is impossible for it to remain a secret. I could be wrong, but that’s my feeling.
Do you have a theory about what’s going on with these sightings? There are all kinds of theories – from top-secret programs, foreign technology, to intentional government disinformation.
This puts us in a bad position to believe in conspiracies. We want to know, don’t we? The best story is that there’s a bad guy, or there’s a bad alien. If something is simple we can understand it. But what’s more likely – and I go to Occam’s Razor all the time – is that the simpler explanation is usually the best. The most likely explanation is: The world is mysterious, and there are things we don’t know. We’re just hairless monkeys doing our best to try to figure it out.
Of course, I have to ask your reaction when you heard about Ryan Coogler X-Files Reboot.
I wish them success. It’s a wonderful framework that Chris Carter came up with all those years ago – believer and non-believer grappling with these mysteries. I always thought it was endlessly generative. It’s really about the writers room for me. Because we had great writers. We had Vince Gilligan, the Morgan brothers, Howard Gordon, Darren Morgan and others. We were thrilled to have a writers room that can generate 20 to 25 movie ideas. I wouldn’t insult something like that the houseBecause this is great TV. but X-Files It was the idea of a movie every week.
So I hope Ryan doesn’t have to do 25 [episodes] He only has to do 10 or 12. And I hope he has great writers, because that’s really the key to making this show a success.
Gillian Anderson suggested in an interview that she read the pilot script. Did you?
No, I didn’t. I talked to Ryan, and I have a general idea of what it is, but I haven’t read the script.
Did they ask you to come?
There have been talks about certain things, but nothing concrete at this point.
In theory, how would you feel about appearing in that character again if the opportunity arose?
I don’t know what world his show is. I don’t know if my character is on this show. This is all hypothetical for me, so I can’t really process it.
You have a few projects coming up. Is there someone you’d like to particularly impress?
Yes, I just finished shooting The platformIt’s the screenplay I wrote with Max Barbakow. I got to work on it with my daughter [West Duchovny]along with Laverne Cox, Randall Park, and Jennifer Grey, I truly believe we created something special. We’ve just finished, we’ve just started publishing, so it’s far from out of there. But I’m weirdly excited about it. Usually after I finish something, it’s like The old man and the sea: You had the biggest fish you ever caught, and by the time you got back to land, the sharks had taken most of them. This one, I feel like the Sharks got a little out of it. This is my feeling at this point. I feel like I’ve got the big fish and I’m about to put it on the dock.
