-Welcome back. -Thank you.
-So this is now -- -I love it in scenes
where they write the name of the person
you're supposed to be discussing
on a big piece of paper as Hangman.
"David can't remember his lines.
Let's do a whole episode of Hangman.
[ Laughter ]
-Oh, so you're the kind of actor that just loves it --
If it's right there on paper, you don't have to rehearse.
-Well, many times, I want to be the actor who cheats that way,
like on a computer.
And I'll write what I'm supposed to be seeing on the computer
or commenting on the computer, on the computer,
and then I'll start to feel so guilty that I'm a crappy actor
and I should've memorized my line.
And then my eyes have gotten worse,
so I can't even read what I've written.
[ Laughter ]
My handwriting is so bad and so small, and I'm there,
and I don't know my lines now,
and everybody knows that I'm a crappy actor,
and I've been trying to cheat, and it's just awful.
-Well, I don't think you're a crappy actor.
-Well, thanks.
-I do think you should have figured all this out by now.
Because this is now 25 years... [ Laughter ]
-Yeah, true. -...25 years of Mulder.
Did you ever think -- I mean, no one thinks this,
but what's it been like to play a character for this long,
and has it been nice
to have the breaks that you've had, obviously?
Because it's not been 25 years straight.
-It's like Mulder, again. Yeah.
Yeah, it's -- it's --
I don't know that I can compare it
to anybody else's job, because, you know,
I started playing this guy in '93.
And he has a certain kind of, like, anti-establishment energy.
And I would've had to have had that, too.
You know, I auditioned for it
irreverently in a tie with pigs on it.
-You wore a pig tie when you auditioned?
-I thought that was, like, irreverent.
-Yeah. Did they like that?
Did they say, "You're our guy," when they saw it?
-No. They said, "We thought you were our guy
until we saw the pig tie." [ Laughter ]
And then, you know, now I'm playing him 25 years later,
and he's still -- he's still kind of anti-establishment.
But you can't play it with the same kind of energy
that you do as a young man.
It has to have ripened into some other kind of decrepitude.
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
-But it's like an energetic decrepitude,
if you know what I'm saying. -Yeah.
-So that's really what I've been trying to find
is an energetic decrepitude. [ Laughter ]
-That's seems like something worth fighting for.
-I feel like, in this moment right here, I found it.
[ Laughter ]
-An interesting thing that's happened is it feels
like the world has caught up to the Mulder world view in 1993
of "Don't trust the government."
That now seems to be, like, a platform you can even run on.
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
Well, it is interesting, because when we first started
doing the reboot, I was like, "Oh, my God.
Is Mulder kind of in league with President [bleep] hole?"
[ Laughter ] -Yeah.
-And by the way, I think the word
you're looking for is [bleep] blank.
-Yeah. Oh! You think we should
just go [bleep] blank? Yeah.
-[Bleep] blank is perfectly acceptable.
-Right. Now that's like a game of Hangman.
-[Bleep] blank. [ Laughter ]
[Bleep] blank countries.
Since "hole" or "house" is the one that's open to conjecture.
-Yeah, exactly.
-But I think, you know, Mulder was saying
that the government is lying about aliens
and stuff like that.
And what is coming out
of President [bleep] hole's White House
is that they're delegitimizing every news source.
-Yeah, it's not just aliens. Yeah.
-Actually, aliens is the only thing they're giving us.
-Yeah, exactly. [ Laughter ]
-You know, so...
-You obviously spent a lot of time with this character.
Do you think Mulder is a good FBI agent?
-He's the worst. -Yeah.
[ Laughter ]
-We've done about 200 -- I think 213 or 218 episodes.
-Yeah. -And he has solved nary a case.
[ Laughter ]
-Yeah, it's really the opposite of "Law & Order."
It never ends in a courtroom.
-Yeah, it's like no laws and no order.
[ Laughter ] -Yeah.
No arrests. 25 years, and no arrests.
-"Damn it! Again." [ Laughter ]
You know, and it's like, by the fourth season of the show,
like, we've become a big hit,
and it started to reflect in the writing a little bit
where Gillian Anderson's character and I
would walk into a scene, and people would go,
"Oh, my God. It's Mulder and Scully,"
and I'm like, "No, no, no!"
It's like, "Ugh. It's Mulder and Scully."
-Right. -But it was like
the real-world appreciation of our characters
that kind of infected -- -The fake FBI.
Now it's a really --
This should be Trump's favorite show.
One, you don't trust the government.
And, two, you're an FBI agent
who doesn't know what he's doing.
Trump's like, "This is what I've been saying about everything!"
-Yeah, yeah. [ Laughter and applause ]
-Do you -- -Well, we didn't --
We didn't shoot a scene --
Like, our boss is named Skinner,
and he always has the President's picture.
So we've had Clinton, and we've had Bush,
and we've had Obama, even.
So we've had three -- And I was --
I was so terrified that we were gonna have to shoot a scene --
-And you shot around it? -With Orange Julius.
[ Laughter ]
And, uh... I don't know.
I guess we weren't in Skinner's office,
so we kind of got away with it. -Oh, good.