Her character is as fascinating as she's terrifying to me. I love how, even if we don't know much about her, we quickly understand how much of a threat she can be. I love the details about her younger self and the way she cares about her family, despite her cold demeanor and harsh comments.
To me, Clea, if she even had the time to grieve, is doing so through anger. I'm horrified at what she did to her painted self, and at the same time i can understand how insulted she must've felt. To see herself through the eyes of her grieving mother, living another life while she was left to pick up the pieces of a shattered family and the responsabilities that come with it.
August 1, 2011:
CableFAX: And you just did another X-Files movie in 2008. Do you and David Duchovny keep in touch during the down times?
Anderson: Oh yeah.
CableFAX: Great. I’m going to start a campaign to get you a guest spot on “Californication.”
Anderson: OK, please do because we’re actually doing a question-and-answer thing tomorrow at a charity event, and that’s one of the questions I have: Why haven’t they offered me a guest spot on Californication?
CableFAX: Seriously.
Anderson: It’s a no brainer! How funny would that be to be a completely, completely different character.
CableFAX: Right. It can’t be anything like Scully.
Anderson: And it has to be sexual—because how weird would that be? It would just be weird to see this person who was Scully, and anyway… we’ll start the campaign.
July 30, 2011:
GA: How come I’ve never been offered a guest role on Californication?
[Audience erupts into applause. DD shifts in his chair, shrugs at the audience.]
[Beat of silence after clapping stops. Audience chuckles.]
GA: [Laughs.] That’s all you have to say-- thank you! [DD laughs.]
DD: Um. Yeah, I don’t-- it’s gonna be hard [inaudible]--
GA: I’d do it for free, baby.
DD: [Eyebrows up] Oh.
[Audience erupts into cheers, applause.]
DD: Yeah, I’ll hook you up with Runkle. [“No!”s from audience.]
GA: I wouldn’t mind that, actually. I wouldn’t mind.
DD: Um, but honestly, I don’t think we can ever work together aside from what we do.
[Audience “Ah”s, “No”s.]
GA: Wouldn’t it be funny if I got to come on as a different character and then we’d have--
DD: Of course you’d be a different character!
[Audience, GA, CC laugh.]
GA: Wouldn’t that be funny?
DD: [Unconvinced] So, so… really? But….
GA: Yeah! [Audience loudly applauds.]
DD: [Shrugs] I, I feel it’s, it’s, it’s….
GA: And I hate you! [Audience shocked.] Or I love you! But something different than--
DD: I just feel like it’s wrong. It feels wrong to me.
[Audience “No”s, boos.]
DD: [Looks at audience, shrugs] I’m just being honest.
[Turns back to GA.] I feel like that’s [Mulder/Scully] a relationship.
GA: That’s true.
DD: And uh…. [Disappointment from audience.] Not for me to use that word there, but... but, you know, I, I, I do feel that way. So, I…. [Shifts.] But I’d love to work with you.
CC: [Conciliatory] You can read for the part.
GA: [Laughs.]
DD: Yeah.
GA: [Mock sad, whispers] Okay. [Audience noises of sympathy.]
DD: [Guilted; quieter, looks down] I’ll tell you what, I, I, uh…. We’ll figure something out.
[GA laughs, audience claps.]
October 12, 2013:
Fan asks if DD watched GA's other shows, and if he wants a guest on one. GA puts her hand up to her face, humorously mouths "No" after he answers "Yes."]
DD: I haven't seen The Fall, I hear it's great. [Audience whoops.] Gillian and I, you know, we talked about acting together. I never thought it
was-- [teasing] --she didn't, she was kidding about being on Californication. She knows it wasn't right.
GA: [Stares him down, cracks when audience laughs.] I was not kidding about being on. But I understand his feelings about it; and I respect them. [Teasing now] Not that I had any control over it.
DD: No!
GA: But I don't understand.
DD: No, we, we're kind of, we're kind of like-- we feel like a little caretaking of the Mulder and Scully [relationship]. So we, we'd be, we'd be careful of.... It's not just 'cuz, 'Oh, I want to hang out with Gillian,' or, 'Oh, I want to be on that show.' It would have to be more than that to.... It would have to be something really special or different. Uh, it, it just can't be-- kind of like, 'Oh, just feel like doing that,' or....
GA: No! But the idea of that, that, that, that-- [Audience laughs.] I'd come out as like a, a Scully impersonating stripper that you have sex with!
[Audience erupts into cheers. DD swallows a smirk, looks down, shakes his head.]
GA: [Addresses crowd] Wouldn't that be funny? [Faces DD, starts swaying side-to-side] Take off my pastel suit.... [Waits until he smirks before turning away, satisfied.]
DD: I don't know--
GA: It's too late now, anyway.
DD: --I don't know what show you were watching.
[Audience laugh, DD and GA chuckle.]
October 14, 2013:
While we wait for a third movie, what about some other form of a reunion, say if one of them were to guest on the other’s current television show(s)? Duchovny told Vulture he didn’t think it would be a good idea. “We don’t want to cross that line,” he said. “We think that the characters are so iconic, why play with it? I think we could act together, but it would have to be very specific.”
“I think it would be better if we did comedy,” Anderson said.
“But not that … I hate that winking, meta-meta-meta sh-t,” Duchovny said. “I hate it more than anything.”
Anderson, still, had a few ideas. “Hannibal Lecter could eat Mulder,” she suggested, referring to her role on Hannibal. “And on Californication, she’d be game for a guest spot playing “a Scully-impersonating stripper” with whom Hank Moody has sex. “I could wear a pastel suit!”
October 20, 2013:
TV Guide Magazine: At the Paley Center's recent New York television festival, your X-Files buddy David Duchovny announced that he didn't want you to do his longtime Showtime series Californication, because he wanted to preserve the memory of your partnership on The X Files. Was he kidding?
Anderson: He was dead serious. And there's no chance now, because they filmed their last episode. [Laughs] I think it was about protecting the relationship and not wanting to sully it in any way. I understand that.
September 1, 2018:
With no word on a new season of The X-Files, a fan pondered aloud if the two would ever be co-stars again.
David Duchovny quickly answered, “It’s impossible to say.”
But Anderson wasn’t as quick to turn the idea down. “We talked for a while about how it would be fun to do a proper spoof — an Airplane type of thing,” she suggested.
BONUS
March 20, 2000:
Anderson: There have been times where a movie I've been looking at to do, I heard they wanted to use you as the male.
Duchovny: Theoretically, it's fun to think about, but practically, there'd be no way we'd do it. Unless it was the best script either of us had ever read and we'd say, "Screw Mulder and Scully. We have to do it." It would be silly otherwise. People would just go to movie theaters to make fun of us. [Both laugh.] Don't underestimate how much people want to make fun.
Anderson: I don't know about making fun, but certainly they'd judge.
