The actor: David Duchovny, who became a star in the ’90s playing an FBI agent investigating the world’s freakiest mysteries on The X-Files. He went on to star in big-budget movies and low-budget indies, often showing a wry sense of humor even when working on the darkest material. He also wrote and directed his own 2004 feature film, House Of D. Duchovny currently stars on the Showtime series Californication as a conflicted writer and serial philanderer; the second season has just been released on DVD, and the third season launches on Showtime later this year.
Californication (2007-present)—“Hank Moody”
David Duchovny: I remember getting the script and thinking it was very funny in a way that hearkens back to more adult films of the ’70s, like Shampoo or The Last Detail, where you have an actual functioning adult navigating adult problems. When I looked around at the kind of stuff that was available to me, or even not available to me, the comedies were often that man-child thing, with boys in men’s bodies navigating almost adolescent issues. So this was the kind of stuff I’d been wanting to do, and not necessarily the kind of movies being made at the time. It happened on television for me rather than in the movies, but it was the kind of material I wanted to do.
The A.V. Club: Why do you think there’s been a revival of the misbehaving hero on TV over the past several years?
DD: Well, I think it was a staple of the movies in the ’70s. Can’t speak so much to the ’80s, and not in the ’90s, and not after the turn of the century. I can only speculate as to why. I would assume it has to do with movies trying to hit as many quadrants as they can, and therefore having to please very young adults as well as middle-aged adults. And it seems like the anti-hero would be something more… well, at least an adult anti-hero… Well, now I’m not making any sense, because Rebel Without A Cause caused a sensation for kids a long time ago. But it seems to me that once you start trying to please all the people all the time, you’ve kind of got to take the edges off of your leads. And in cable television now, you probably have the most artistic freedom in the making of drama. On cable, although this could be changing now too, you’re not necessarily trying to have a hit that invades the entire culture, you’re trying to attract new viewers to the cable outfit. You can really go out a little further and not have to make your character available to 12-year-old boys as well.
The TV Set (2006)—“Mike Klein”
DD: See, there’s a guy who’s navigating those questions about making television. I think I’d met [writer-director] Jake Kasdan a few years earlier. We had talked about doing a film together. I really liked his work, and I liked him, and we’d always kind of kept track of one another. And then he sent me this script, and I thought it was really smart, and I kind of knew the world a little bit. Not so much as a writer-producer, but as an actor, I certainly knew the world of television. And it was a story that was interesting to tell. I never thought that it was going to leave that world, or find an audience necessarily beyond that world. But I thought it was a nice little human story, and I really liked the idea of playing a character who had to navigate within really… I don’t know anything about speaking Japanese, but it seems to me that in television, everybody’s kind of speaking in codes of power, and that was very interesting to me, to play this character who really couldn’t say what he wanted to say. Whereas I was coming off of playing Fox Mulder on The X-Files for so long, and he always says exactly what he wants to say. I liked playing a character who has a certain amount of power but certainly is not all-powerful, and has to navigate through those streams with Sigourney Weaver, with his wife, with the actors, everything. Everything was in code in that movie, and I thought that was very interesting.
AVC: Is there a secret to navigating that world? Do you have to remind yourself that the people you’re talking to are just as caught up in it as you are?
DD: Well, I think it depends on the game people are playing. Some people are playing an artistic game, and they’re making art, and that’s got different rules. And some people are getting a paycheck, which is fine too. And there are a lot of people below the line who are getting paychecks, and you’ve got to show up and work for them as well, so… Just like every show has a tone, every show has different people on it playing different games. I don’t say “game” in a pejorative sense, I just mean, these are different stories that we tell ourselves when we go to work.