(Taken from this post, unless specified otherwise.)
SEASON 8'S OPENER
-- During his DVD commentary for "Existence," director Kim Manners revealed that he directed the sequence added to the Season 8 opening titles of Mulder falling away from the camera, suggesting Mulder's absence in an abstract way. "It's called a 'descender,'" Manners explained. "The actor is attached to a cable, dropped backward 36 feet, and the cable stops him just before he hits the floor." Manners mentioned that David Duchovny did the stunt himself and "really enjoyed doing it."
SECOND-TO-LAST DAY
-- "My last day was very emotional," recalled David Duchovny. "My very last day was running shots and little bits of action that we had to do for the last few episodes. I was with Mitch. Chris came down to the set. Chris and I spoke. We had to work together. All that other stuff [the lawsuit], in the end, really is business. What we do on The X-Files is business, and yet it's a creative process. If Chris and I aren't speaking, that's a big deficit, a big gap. We had to be adults. We're paid to do a job. And that means speaking to each other."
-- "But my second-to-last-day, when I shot my last scene with Gillian, was very emotional and very sad," Duchovny said. "I really *hadn't* pondered the weight of eight years coming to a close until I was in the middle of the scene and realized that this would be the last time I was going to do Mulder and Scully on the show. It was sad and very heavy, but not depressing. It was an acknowledgement of a lot of time, effort, and love."
-- Kim Manners' DVD commentary about the final scene goes exactly like this: "This was David and Gillian's last scene together and we shot it on the last day. As they come together to kiss, you will see the camera pull back out the door and that was the last shot of David and Gillian together. And we wrapped, and David and Gillian stood in that room together alone and held each other for a good five minutes. They didn't talk, they didn't move, they just held each other, with tears running down their faces. It was a very touching moment and one I will never forget. And I think we got the kiss in one take."
July 12, 2001:
That final scene would have been significantly different had Duchovny and director Kim Manners not intervened after both were unsatisfied with series creator Chris Carter’s original ending which featured a mundane kiss on the forehead.
“We all sat down with Kim Manners and Chris Carter and said, ‘We’ve been teasing and doing that bull for so long, let’s have a real kiss at this point,'” Duchovny said during his press junket to promote his latest film “Evolution.” “I said, ‘I’m pretty sure I’m not coming back at this point so let’s have a romantic kiss.'”
2001:
That last day was surreal. I think a part of my brain was trying to ignore the fact that it was approaching, so I was kind of going about my day as if it were any other day, and then we ended up in this scene with this dialogue that was the end for that stage of our relationship. All of a sudden I think he was more aware of it and was being really mindful of that last scene.
"I blocked it out until the last moment where all of a sudden it hit me, that this person that I was standing in front of as I know him and have known him for such a long time, that this aspect of our relationship was coming to a close. We embraced and I just burst into tears. We held our embrace for a really long time and I think it was just flooding over us, the importance of this agreement that we’ve had to be in each other’s lives in a very powerful way.”
FRIENDSHIPS ON SET
-- "Robert [Patrick] and I had a good time working together," David Duchovny noted. "He's a really nice guy and a good actor. It was different because the center of the show had been a male-female relationship, Mulder and Scully, for so many years. And in some of my scenes with Robert, especially the ones in 'Vienen,' there was a different kind of energy -- a buddy energy. It made me regret that we hadn't done it earlier. Maybe we should have brought Skinner [Mitch Pileggi] into the mix a little more fully so you could have had Mulder and Skinner or Mulder and Doggett going off and doing the buddy thing, then coming back and have Mulder and Scully or Scully and Doggett or Scully and Skinner. It would have made for a less claustrophobic feel for the actors. Then again, you don't fix it if it's working."
-- Manners was very glad to be able to work with Nicholas Lea one more time. "Nick was always great," he said, "and he and David worked so well together; they just had this amazing chemistry. I really loved the way they played their last scene together. This episode was David's swan song, and I thought it was a great way for him to go out."
FUN RETURN... AND DECISIVE EXIT
February 2002:
So, did Duchovny ever approach Patrick and say, either directly or in essence, ‘I’m not coming back. It’s all yours. Good luck’? “David and I had a couple of conversations about it and they went like this,” Patrick recalls. “David said, ‘Man, I’m having fun. This is fun. I’m really enjoying working with you.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I think it’s great. I want you to come back whenever you want and I hope you know that.’ He said, ‘I do and I will, maybe. I’ve got to see how things progress and how they write.’
“That’s how it went for a while,” says Patrick. “Then, as things progressed, I got the sense that he wanted to stick with his game plan of saying goodbye and moving on. But I never got a definitive [answer] until the end. He said, ‘Hey man, you’ve got a great job. You’re doing a great job. Just have fun with it.’
“He probably decided that, after eight years, enough was a enough,” Patrick continues. “I’m not going to speak for him, but I want to convey that it was a great experience working with him. I think he really enjoyed it. But I think as he got back into it, he thought, ‘You know, I said I’m going to walk away and I’m going to stick to that.’ He never flat-out said that to me, but that was the sense I got.”
JUST CRITICISMS
-- In an interview just after he left the series, David Duchovny was asked if there was any part of Mulder that he never got to explore as an actor. "The issue of Mulder's disappearance was never dealt with on an emotional level," he said. "Here was a guy who was abducted, we think. At least that's what *I* think, and I'm playing the guy. And nobody seemed interested in that when he came back. It was, 'Oh boy, you look bad,' and then, 'Here's another case. Want to take a look at this?' What I would have enjoyed playing as an actor was working through the difficulties that being abducted might have created inside the character. I don't think that's an opportunity we would take in the movies, though. It would just be reworking something from the past that not everybody would be aware of."
July 12, 2001, Tom Kessenich:
“When I came back, I felt somewhat peripheral,” Duchovny said. “Mulder’s story was one of three or four stories and it didn’t feel like the same show to me.”
Spotnitz responds to such complaints by saying 1013’s hands were tied creatively due to Duchovny’s contract, which called for him to be a part-time participant.
EXaminations, Tom Kessenich:
Duchovny also did not care for the paternity tease [in Season 8] since it prevented him and Anderson from establishing any proper dramatic foreshadowing. The two stars were also reportedly unhappy the relationship between Mulder and Scully was not explored more fully since Duchovny planned to leave the series at the end of the season.
ON REFLECTION
THE COMPLETE X FILES, 2008:
As the season wound down, Mulder was refused readmittance to the FBI, and the drama began to focus on establishing the new agents. "I completely thought it was correct that they should be trying to focus elsewhere, and that, since I was going to come back for the second half of season eight, if you were to refocus on whatever Mulder's up to, you'd be in the same lousy situation at the beginning of season nine," Duchovny says today.
