David Duchovny on Californication
By Earl Dittman
Teeming with edgy, in-your-face dialogue, controversial sex situations and tender family moments, Californication features David Duchovny (the former Agent Fox Mulder from the decade-long running series The X-Files) in the most hedonistic and narcissistic role of his career. “I don’t want people to judge it superficially or morally,” Duchovny says of Californication, the second season of which in now out on home video. “It’s not a show about a drug addict or a show about a sex addict or a show about all of these tags that you try to put on it because they’re spectacular or they might make good copy or they might enrage someone. I think it’s a comedy. It’s a human comedy. It’s an adult comedy. It’s not an adult acting like a six year old, which is what most comedies are like. It’s about an adult doing adult things.”
Check out Earl Dittman’s chat with Duchovny, and this week’s DVDs and Blu-rays, after the jump.
Boasting a fine balance of debauchery and moral values, in the critically-acclaimed Season Two of Californication, Duchovny returned to his Golden Globe award-winning role as downbeat, self-loathing writer Hank Moody. A New York transplant now living in California, Hank’s life is spinning gloriously out of control as he juggles his sex and drug addictions while raising his daughter Becca (Madeleine Martin) and trying to win back the love of his ex-girlfriend (Natascha McElhone). Complicating matters further is his straight-laced agent (Evan Handler), who is always trying to break Hank’s continuous case of writer’s block that’s preventing him from cranking out another hit novel (while he secretly envies Hank’s swinging bachelor ways).
You don’t look like you have aged at all since the early days of The X-Files. How do you stay looking so young? Do you have any secrets about not aging?
“No, I don’t have any. I eat well. I exercise. Take one-a-day vitamins. I don’t know. My brother and sister always look younger than they are. I think it’s probably just…”
Genetics?
“Yeah, it could be genetics. I mean, we look good, but then we die young.”
When you got the role of Hank Moody in Californication, did you start to go to the gym more since you have more revealing scenes?
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
What have you done to step it up more?
“I’d like you to rephrase your question to be, ‘Obviously you’ve been to the gym a lot.’” [Laughs]
What are you doing?
“Well, you know what, for the first time I started lifting a little weights. That’s it, but I always did something.”
Running or something?
“Just something — sports, swimming, yoga, boxing or basketball.”
No diet change?
“No, not really a diet change. With the kids it’s hard because they leave the macaroni and cheese out.”
Do you avoid the craft service table?
“Oh, I always did. I learned early on in X-Files, don’t eat the M&M’s.
What does Fox Mulder have in common with Hank Moody?
“Well, as you say, I think that Hank might be in a little better shape. I guess that they both want to know the truth and they both speak the truth. I haven’t really thought of it that way, but I guess that they both speak their minds to their detriment.”
After finishing The X-Files series, you had said you didn’t want to do TV anymore. But now you are getting ready to start your third season of Californication, a big cable hit. Why the change of heart?
“At the time that I left, the show was all-consuming and it felt like a box. But years later, I had done a bunch of other stuff that I enjoyed and proved to myself, not anybody else, that I could do certain other things. It wasn’t an issue anymore. And if you were saying, ‘Would you go back to doing the television show of The X-Files, I would never do that. The time commitment was crazy. Californication is a 12-week season. That’s one of the reasons I could go back to television because it wasn’t a ten-month job.”
With shows like Californication, do you think cable television has become a more creative and interesting field for actors?
“I think it’s been that way for a long time, especially with the advent of the cable channels. What you have on cable television, you don’t have to please as many people as network television or movies do. Movies, especially now they’re made to please people 13-80 men and women. How can you do that? What kind of thing can you make that’s going to do that? It’s going to be very general. Let’s say it’s the better version like Iron Man or Batman or I don’t know what you like, but that’s the better version of it. But still not very personal. Not small. Not human.”
In Hollywood terms, what kind of movies are being made on networks like Showtime?
“On cable television, you can really make the kind of work that used to be called independent cinema. Even independent cinema now is no longer independent cinema — unless you have your true independence. You don’t know who they are, neither do they, because that’s how independent they are. [Laughs] The so-called independents are really just person-generated, lower budget movies that the huge corporations decide to take a minor gamble on by putting up a five to ten million dollar budget, secretly hoping that it catches fire and makes them a shitload of money.”
Before Californication — and before the second X-Files movie — it was a well-known fact that you tried to distance yourself from the role of Mulder as much as you could. But, then, you did The X-Files: I Want To Believe sequel. Do you have a love/hate relationship with the show that made you famous?
“The love/hate has nothing to do with the actual content, the actual people, the actual anything. The love/hate had to do with me wanting to get on with the rest of my life, the rest of my career and when you think about it, that I did nine years and Gillian (Anderson) did ten, that’s a lifetime.”
There’s a couple of series that in their 15th season and over.
“Yeah, but there are no other dramas that keep the same characters that run that long. If you look at Law & Order or ER, they’re 20 years old or whatever they are, but they’re completely recast. So it’s just not something you see. You don’t see actors not get fatigued and not get frustrated in a drama where we’re working, cell phones or not, everyday for many, many hours playing the same characters. So it’s just natural to burnout. There was always love for the show and love for the character. There was never any hate for that.”
What was your first job in TV?
“I guess that it was Twin Peaks. It was great.”
On the DVD set, you like a pretty good-looking woman.
“You’re being kind.” [Laughs]
What’s been the most difficult or most physically demanding role you’ve done?
“Probably this one, the role of Hank.”
Why Hank?
“Because I have my shirt off and there is some physical comedy as it’s playing out in the series which I’m all for.”
Do you enjoy that?
“Very much, very much. That’s just like playing a game to me.”
What makes Californication different from all the other series on television?
“It’s the drama and the comedy and the graphic content and yet at it’s heart it’s lighthearted, even though it’s about a guy in despair possibly. It’s still got a light heart to it because at its heart it’s a comedy, and I think that’s what makes it not a sitcom. Even compared to like Sex and the City or something, that’s much lighter. This is a seemingly stark world, but it still has this buoyant heart which is what I want this character to be. There’s something fun loving about him. These are the kinds of things that I need to forget on Monday.”
Do you think that The X-Files would’ve been different if it had been on Showtime, the same network as Californication?
[Laughs] “Well, Mulder and Scully probably would have had sex right away and then the show wouldn’t have lasted.”
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