Sci Fi Wire: X-Files Reunion Emotional
By Patrick Lee, News Editor
February 26, 2008
The producers of the upcoming X-Files sequel told SCI FI Wire that they got emotional when stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson showed up for an informal "table read" of the script, reuniting for the first time since the hit Fox series went off the air in 2002.
"A month before we started filming, maybe six weeks, David and Gillian came in and read the script at [director] Chris [Carter's] kitchen table, and it was emotional to hear them say those words," writer/producer Frank Spotnitz said in a group interview at WonderCon in San Francisco over the weekend.
"And then a week later, we had camera tests at Chris' house, and [Anderson's] hair was red again, and David had ... got his hair cut like Mulder again, and it was like, 'Oh, my.' It was like bringing back the dead, in a way, or like finding somebody who'd gone missing for six years. So, to me, it feels very powerful."
Carter, who created the show and co-wrote the sequel, had a similar reaction. "I actually was moved," Carter said between yawns (he flew directly to WonderCon on Saturday after wrapping an all-night shoot at 6 o'clock that morning in Vancouver, Canada).
"It's funny, because ... we've been through so much together, and to ... come back [from] what I would call a really good vacation away from it was a really nice thing," Carter added. "And it allows us to start fresh. ... When you're doing the TV series, you are doing it--for me it was 11 and a half months a year. You take two weeks off, and then you go right back at it. It was nice to take that breather and come back at this fresh and rejuvenated."
Despite a six-year hiatus, both Spotnitz and Carter--who were both executive producers of the long-running TV series--said they had no problem writing the characters of FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully again.
"I know it was sort of startling to me how deep my connection still was to the characters after all of this time and how much it mattered to me what's become of them and what they think and what they would do," Spotnitz said. "It felt vital to me, and it felt very interesting, and it was ... really fun. It was really very enjoyable, working on the story and reconvening with them again."
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