David Duchovny doesn't know if Fox Mulder even exists in Ryan Coogler's X-Files

This is per an interview Duchovny gave to THR this week, in which all involved made their best possible efforts to talk about his History Channel series Secrets Declassified for an acceptable amount of time before diving into X-Files stuff. (Among other things, Duchovny put forward his own personal criteria for not believing in UFOs, despite their recent vogue, noting, “I’ve never really seen two people keep a secret, let alone thousands of people in a government throughout generations.”) But, gravity being what it is, the conversation inevitably drifted ever-more Mulder-ward, until THR just came out and asked what Duchovny knows about the reboot/revival.

All of which was pretty hedge-y, as Duchovny acknowledged that he’s talked to Coogler, but never seen a script for the project: “I haven’t. I’ve spoken to Ryan, and I have a general sense of what it is, but I haven’t read the script… There have been talks about certain things, but there’s nothing concrete at this point.” When asked about hypotheticals—i.e., whether he’d come back if asked to—Duchovny didn’t even go so far as Anderson’s cheeky “Call me” from last year: “I don’t know what the world of his show is. I don’t know if my character exists in that show. It’s all hypothetical to me, so I can’t really address it.”

All that being said, Duchovny did sound at least intrigued by the project, saying, “I wish them luck. It’s a great frame that Chris Carter came up with all those years ago—a believer and a nonbeliever tackling these mysteries. I always thought it was endlessly generative. It really comes down to the writers’ room for me. Because we had great writers. We had Vince Gilligan, the Morgan brothers, Howard Gordon, Darin Morgan and others. We were blessed to have a writers’ room that could generate 20 to 25 movie ideas. I’m not going to insult something like The Pitt, because that’s great television. But The X-Files was a movie idea every week. So I hope Ryan doesn’t have to do 25 and only has to do 10 or 12. And I hope he’s got great writers, because that’s really the key to making that show work.”