You’re not alone if you refuse to believe a revival of The X-Files is actually happening until you’re watching it on your television, but early word on the project has provided some justification for optimism — especially when it comes to the emotional gravity of the reunion.
According to the show’s alien-savvy FBI Agent Fox Mulder, aka David Duchovny, just the first page was enough to bring tears to his eyes.
“I got the first script this morning,” Duchovny told EW.com during a recent interview. “I just read it about an hour ago and I started crying reading the first page. It was just so strange to see the names on the page. It had nothing to do with the script itself. It was just like, I’d been talking about this for a long time. We’d been planning it for a long time. It took a long time to get all the people in the same place and get the deal with Fox. So let’s say two years we’ve been talking about doing it.”
“Now it’s the fun part,” he continued. “Now we actually get to do it. That was nice and strangely emotional for me, and I’ll have to figure out how to use that [in the performance].”
Set to span six episodes, the limited series will once again air on FOX and bring back veteran series stars Duchovny (as Mulder) and Gillian Anderson (as FBI Agent Dana Scully) as investigators of the unknown, as well as supporting cast members Mitch Pileggi (as Walter Skinner) and William B. Davis (as Cigarette Smoking Man), among other returning characters. The X-Files creator Chris Carter also returns as the head writer and showrunner, along with original series writers Glen Morgan and James Wong.
Sadly (or fortunately, depending on how spoiler-conscious you are), Duchovny couldn’t reveal too much information about the series and what form it will take — narratively or contextually — when it returns to television after 13 years.
“I can tell you absolutely nothing—and it’s fantastic,” said Duchovny when pressed for details.
However, the actor did confirm that there will be a balance of standalone episodes and over-arching mythology spanning the series’ six-episode revival.
“Even though there’s only six [episodes], there will be a mix,” he said. “It’s not really The X-Files without the mythology.”