Actor David Duchovny, who starred in one of the most successful science fiction shows of all time, “The X-Files,” doesn’t care for the genre.
“I’ve never really been interested in science fiction,” he confesses. “It’s not a genre that I really seek out to watch. I guess when I was growing up, a long, long time ago, I liked the first ‘Star Trek.’ I used to watch that with my mom — the one with (William) Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.
“So that’s really the only science fiction I remember. I do remember being into this series of books called ‘Chariots of the Gods,’ and they did make a movie of it,” the 65-year-old recalls.
“This was Erich von Däniken, who was positing that alien civilizations had landed. And they were the kind of generators of our culture, way back when. So, as a kid, I was interested, but never as an adult — aside from working on that show.”
Definitely not sci-fi
Duchovny is also a writer and has penned four novels. “I’m probably more confident in my writing than I am in either my acting or directing,” he says.
He studied English literature at both Princeton and Yale, earning a master’s degree from Yale and a bachelor’s from Princeton. “I started writing and started taking the life of the mind seriously. I was a good student, but more of a hardworking student than like one of those really bright guys,” he says. “I originally wanted to be a writer but started acting and got caught up in this business,” he says.
“When I write novels, they’re not science fiction,” he insists, “that’s not where my creative bent is.”
His creative bent now is serving as host for the History’s “Secrets Declassified With David Duchovny,” airing at 10 p.m. Tuesdays.
Definitely not science fiction, he says. “These are not fictional events, these are real events that have been classified for a long time, 50 years, so they are a fascinating bit of history to me,” he says.
“Something that was brought to my attention was the bare fact that secrets — that files do become declassified after a certain amount of time — have always been kind of interesting to me, in the sense of the truth will out. Eventually, the truth will out. And to me, that’s a very interesting field of inquiry.”
‘Providing a service’
These “declassified” topics range from clandestine government experiments to black op forays, to bizarre weapons, to underground secret sites.
Because of the subject matter, Duchovny says he was hesitant to take the job in the series — now into its second season. “I thought it was in the same sphere as ‘The X-Files,’ which was completely fictional. … But then I made the distinction in my mind and in the show, actually, that this is more like a documentary, more like nonfiction reporting than it is fictionalization.”
While some of the revelations are laughable, they are important, Duchovny says. “These true stories are ridiculous but of world-shaking significance. So there’s a weird kind of tonality that you have to be able to strike between the high stakes — the possible life-and-death issue — and then just the ridiculous things that are being done. And it’s hard to figure out the tone, because some of it’s laughable, but then you step back and you go, ‘Well, this could have really impacted a lot of people in a negative way.’”
He thinks acting can touch people’s lives. “I think of acting as like being in the service industry, and I think I’m providing a service. I think we get overpaid and overexposed for this service, but I do think that we take journeys and go through experiences up there on the screen or on the TV screen for people.
“People sit in theaters and at home and they go along with us. And something happens. We perform an emotional service for them. They’re entertained or they learn or they feel better after they watch or listen.”