What did David Duchovny say bothered him about ‘The X-Files’?

David Duchovny said that there was a time when he called out the character inconsistencies and continuity errors in The X-Files. In the recent episode of the actor's Fail Better podcast, published on July 8, 2025, he had Bones actress Emily Deschanel as a guest.

During their conversation, the two actors got into talking about how sometimes, they knew the characters they portrayed better than the writers of the shows. It then got Duchovny to open up about how he sometimes has to correct episodic directors about continuity errors.

"It's like this kind of stuff, you know where you're going, you're kind of the curator of the character, and sometimes you have to go, 'I can't actually do that'," he said.

He added that one of his pet peeves while doing The X-Files was when episodic directors would focus more on killing it with a great script that character continuity would sometimes take a backseat. He recalled to the Bones actress:

"Sometimes the directors would come on and they'd know they had a great script and [since] this was on the X-Files, this could happen, you know? Like, 'Holy sh*t, this is a great script,' and they really wanted to kill it. Those guys were dangerous."

To prove his case, David Duchovny shared an example that happened in season 1, episode 12 of The X-Files, which was titled Fire. He said that he pointed out to the director that it didn't make sense for his character to be intensely afraid of fire because he had previously had a scene with a burning building before, and he was fine.

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David Duchovny previously said that he had a falling out with The X-Files creator Chris Carter

Despite being the face of The X-Files as FBI Agent Fox Mulder, David Duchovny left the hit series during its original run. He was a co-lead until season 7, and while he left the show after that, it wasn't a clean break because he was still part of the series, although in a much-reduced role, in seasons 8 and 9, which ended in 2002. He also returned for seasons 10 and 11 in 2016 and 2018, respectively.

However, leaving the show as a lead star after season 7 was a point of contention between Duchovny and The X-Files creator Chris Carter at some point. In the June episode of his Fail Better podcast, he invited Carter as a guest, where they talked about their show and more.

During their conversation, the two admitted that they had a "parting," which largely happened after Duchovny left after season 7 of the crime thriller series. David Duchovny said to Chris Carter at the time:

"I realized later that was a difficult thing to do. Even though you might have been as tired as I was. Or wanting to move on as much as I was. But I consider myself a team player, so I always felt like a bit of an abandonment, not by you, but of you, in that sense."

Carter agreed that it was a "difficult time," but what happened years ago is all resolved now.

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David Duchovny is starring in Jay Duplass' comedic family drama See You When I See You, which is currently in post-production.

Edited by Ahana Mukhopadhyay