David Duchovny became an actor by accident. He was first a writer.
“I kind of sideways started acting,” he tells co-host Molly-Jong-Fast in this bonus episode of The New Abnormal podcast. “I thought, well, if I’m gonna write plays, I should probably know what acting is about. That makes sense. It made sense to me to try and speak words that I wrote.”
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It snowballed from there. While Duchovny is still a writer—his most recent book is called The Reservoir—he’s still doing the acting thing.
One of his latest roles was playing a “jerk” version of himself in Netflix’s show The Chair, starring Sandra Oh. His character is chosen to have his subpar academic work honored over more deserving students in the English department.
“[Show creator Amanda Peet and I] kind of went back and forth on [whether my character should have my name] a little bit. And I finally said, ‘Yeah, I guess maybe you’re right.’ And so we went ahead that way,” he says. “And it’s not because I have any kind of concern over how people perceive me. You know, I played the jerk version of myself a couple of times now, and people do confuse it. People that don’t know me think that I’m probably like that, which is fine. It’s a little distressing. [But] then the way it played out, I was like, Jesus Christ, you know, she’s buying my music to put on the show. She’s playing my music on the show. She’s showing my books on the show. This is an advertisement for me.”
Duchovny also tells Molly whether there’ll be more seasons of The X Files and his personal view on alien life forms: “The rationalist in me looks at the size of the universe and says, ‘there’s no way that we’re the only ones,’ but also the rationalist says if they had contacted us in any significant way, nobody’s keeping that shit a secret.”
Also on this episode: Co-hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Andy Levy listen to more bizarre clips of GOP politicians, including the “single biggest asshole” in America, Ted Cruz, and everyone’s favorite Fox News host, Tucker Carlson, who is still obsessed with testicles.
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