My Kind of Day - David Duchovny
Radio Times, Dec 1995
"I live on the water in Vancouver. I've
got a little tree house, full of a gang of six-year olds, and
I have to climb a rope to get down every morning. No, really,
it's a simple, small house from around 1910, so nothing as old
as you're used to in Britain. But it's right on the ocean. I
love seeing the water. Always have.
"Vancouver is a beautiful city.
Logistically, it's perfect for TheXFiles. We move around so
much, with the traffic in LA it just wouldn't happen. In LA
you can only do a studio, or a show that has one location -
like Baywatch. We're shooting all over the place, so Vancouver
is ideal.
"First thing I do when I get up is walk
Blue, my dog. I don't know if he's a baby substitute. He's
actually a dog substitute, for the last dog I had died. He's a
receptacle of love - and love is much easier to give to a dog
than to a person. Just look at the reaction he elicits when
he's on set with me. He puts things in perspective.
"In the morning I work out, or look at
my script if I need to. Then I get something to eat. I'm
pretty much a vegetarian. Diet is important in my job. You
have a commitment to a 10-month schedule, and you can't stay
home even one day - you really can't. It would cost the
production company hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"If Gillian [Anderson] or I get sick,
what can they do? We've had colds, but nothing to keep us in
bed. It's lucky that neither of us has been injured. The show
can't go on without us. Well, actually, Gillian got taken off
for a while because she got injured in a "pregnant"
way [the script was written in a way that enabled her to take
time off to have a child], but it's just good luck there's
been nothing else.
"If I'm not filming, I sit in my
trailer on the lot. I haven't bothered to make it feel like
home. I come in every morning and think maybe I should, but I
never do. Blue sits in his basket and makes it feel right.
There's just my stereo playing old rock 'n' roll stuff like
the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.
"We get a 12-hour turnaround on
TheXFiles. That means whenever I wrap on the set the night
before, they can't legally call me back for 12 hours. But as
my house is 90 minutes away, the turnaround becomes nine
hours. So it’s hard to live a life. Especially if you're
preparing your work as well.
"Sometimes the weeks go by and you can
do things in the evening. My girlfriend [actress Perrey
Reeves] lives in LA, and we see each other every other
weekend. The separation is hard on us both. It’s difficult
because we're constantly either saying hello or leaving one
another.
"There's really no way of talking about
it conventional terms. It's not a conventional relationship.
How could it be? We live in different cities. It’s only
two-and-a-half hours by plane, but that’s hard. You could
cover all of England in two-and-a-half hours, couldn't you?
This is a big country.
"My relatives are Scottish, so I think
my Scottish audience is important. Some are in Glasgow, but my
mum's from Aberdeen. I hear it's grey there - like my mum. The
name's Russian, but New York is my home. That's where I'm
from. I have a dream. I wouldn't mind working the show from
there one day.
"Back home I relax with Blue. I'm
usually reading. At the moment it's Martin Amis. I read for
maybe ten minutes if I can keep my eyes open, so I have an
experience of something else beside The X Files. That way I
sleep much better."
David Duchovny plays Fox Mulder in The X
Files Mondays BBC2
