- Our next guest is an accomplished actor,
director, writer, musician.
But did you know that, fun fact,
as a kid, he actually wanted to grow up to be a bathtub.
Please welcome, human man, David Duchovny.
(audience applauding)
- Thank you.
Nice to see you.
- I'm so happy you came here.
Thank you, so much.
(audience cheering)
I have been so excited to talk to you.
I'm so thrilled that you would come here, thank you.
- Oh, it's my pleasure, thank you.
And thank you for outing me as a bathtub wannabe.
- I had no idea you aspired to be a bathtub,
how, where and why?
- I think it's hard to get into the brain
of the six year old that I was,
but I think probably, bath time, you have kids,
bath time was my favorite time
and I thought if I was a bathtub
then I'd be in my favorite time all the time.
(audience laughing)
- Well, you heard it here first.
I feel very lucky to be on this breaking story.
- I'm a change, Drew, I'm making a change.
(audience laughing)
- Okay, I know this is a departure
'cause we have so many things to get into.
My daughter and I have been reading your book,
which is so fascinating.
- [David] Oh, thanks.
- And it's such an interesting story.
And it's visually incredibly compelling.
- [David] Right.
- When did you decide to put this into the world?
And then it's also about world's, plural.
- Yes, it is, yeah.
It's taken about like four or five years
working with Phillip Sevy, the illustrator.
But it was really, there were two kind of vectors
that came together for me.
- [Drew] Vectors, hot, go on.
(David laughing)
I'll try to use that word again.
(Drew laughing)
But one was like, for me, a formative moment was like,
in Planet of the Apes when you realize
that they were on earth, right?
- The most incredible ending.
- As a kid it was just, you know,
Charlton Heston at point, Doom, that I know now,
but back then it was just like, blew my mind.
So always I was like, how can I ever come up with
that kind of reverse, you know,
that kind of pull the rug out from an audience
and I thought that I did here, you know,
with the kind of the reverse of the planets.
- You absolutely do.
- Oh, thanks.
- Okay, another pivot that I have to talk to you about
because it's one of my favorite episodes of Sex in the City.
When you and Carrie who are like
younger boyfriend and girlfriend, I mean, come on,
Boy Interrupted, it's--
(audience cheering)
- Yeah.
- I love that episode so much.
When you show up with the sign
and there's all the romance of like,
have we all wasted our time in life?
Should we have just gone with the origin story
of who we loved first?
- Yeah, it's interesting 'cause this movie
that I just wrapped with Meg Ryan,
it's a very similar kind of setup
which is where we're two old, like college lovers
that are stuck in an airport during a blizzard
and have to kind of re-litigate our whole,
our whole relationship.
So you're into that storyline, so there you go.
- Doesn't Meg Ryan direct this film too?
- [David] Yes, she directs this film, yeah.
- Okay.
(audience applauding)
This is.
How do you think it came out?
And will you come back and talk about it?
And how exciting is this? - Oh yeah, no,
I will-- - Like you and Meg Ryan.
- I loved it, I loved Meg.
I loved working with her,
she's a great director and fabulous actress to work with.
So yeah, I'll come back anytime when this.
- Please, I'm so excited for that film.
- [David] Yeah, yeah.
- I mean, you've worked with all these great women,
you know, Sarah Jessica Parker.
Did you have fun doing Sex in the City?
- I did.
- [Drew] Did you enjoy it As much as we enjoyed it?
(David laughing)
- I don't know.
It's a hard,
it's hard to answer.
I feel like I'm walking into it there,
but yeah, I mean, it was a while ago
and I do remember having a really nice time
and actually our kids went to high school together
so I would see Matthew and Sarah quite a bit.
- And then there's a fun fact about the end of the episode
that I didn't know-- - The bathtub?
Was it a bathtub fact?
(audience laughing)
- There's a person at the end--
- Oh yeah.
- Screaming and who that,
I didn't know who the person was.
- Right, Michael Patrick King.
- It's the guy who created the show.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I don't know if he's trying to say something
or, you know, that was his, I don't know,
if he'd acted before or since, but that's him.
- That was just such a fun fact.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Okay, you and Jillian Anderson in The X-Files,
is it true that like you were
the internet's first sex symbol?
(audience cheering)
- I don't know,
I don't know if I can say true or false,
but at first I remember,
why aren't they just interested in the show?
Why aren't they just interested in the product?
It's all of a sudden they're interested in a person, so.
- There were fan groups with specific names weren't there?
- [David] Right, yeah.
- Do you remember any of them?
- It was the David Duchovny Estrogen Brigade, was that?
- [Drew] Yes, yeah, that's one.
That's one.
- And I don't remember the other.
- There was a Duchovnicks.
- Well that's pretty easy, right?
- Yeah, that's a lot tamer than the other one.
- Yeah, yeah.
But that show was so personal for people,
I mean, that show was very important to people.
- Well, I think it's--
- It was about truth or false. - It was, and it fulfilled,
it fulfilled something at the time that wasn't,
that wasn't out there, wasn't on TV.
There wasn't like a scary smart show at--
- And it was appointment television.
Like it, there was, I mean, it was a phenomenon.
- Yeah.
- And what do we believe and what's true?
Did people talk to you about it though?
- [David] Sure. - Fanatically,
was there like that connection
of like, I heard you got fan letters
and people would reach out with their real life experiences.
- Yeah, yeah.
It was humbling in a way because I was,
when the show first started, you know,
I'd get like 15 fan mail letters a week
and I thought it was my responsibility
to take 'em home and answer them.
(audience member awhing)
- I know.
- And then, as I started to read the letters,
some of them were very sad and you know,
they were about, you know, loneliness
and people reaching out and feeling
that they'd been abducted and things like that.
And I was like, I'm not quite, I don't have the answers.
I'm not quite, here's an autographed picture.
(Drew laughing)
- Is it true that you like Polaroids?
- Well, I mean, I used, I mean,
I used to have a camera, yeah.
And we used to screw with them in a way
that's interesting, I think.
- And we have to cut to a quick commercial break,
I was wondering can we take each other's picture?
- Yeah but then we gotta, okay, we got some coins.
- We've got some coins, so you can--
- Let me go first. - Okay, right.
Perfect.
- [David] Here we go.
(audience laughing)
- It works!
(audience applauding)
Power!
- [David] Okay, and now, oh, I forgot to pose.
(audience applauding)
- And then David's gonna take a coin
and design the Polaroids,
and so now this is what all the Gen Zers
and millennials could be--
- It's been 30 years.
- And yet, you're rocking it.
(upbeat music)