'That Was The Fringe': David Duchovny X-Files Creator Chris Carter 'Foresaw' Emergence Of Conspiracy Culture 30 Years Ago

David Duchovny reflects on The X-Files, noting Chris Carter's foresight into conspiracy culture. He also discusses his departure from the series and the planned reboot by Ryan Coogler.

By Shovan Roy

Published on Jul 22, 2024 | 09:31 PM IST | 66.5K

The X-Files (Image via IMDb)

David Duchovny remains down-to-earth even though the truth is out there. An actor who starred in the blockbuster science fiction television series The X-Files was quoted as saying that its creator Chris Carter was almost prophetic when he depicted this conspiracy culture that has since engulfed most of the nation.

The evolution of conspiracy thinking

“Mulder’s way of looking at the world was through conspiracy and that was the fringe at that point,” Duchovny told The Times. “It doesn’t seem to be so fringe any more. It’s really the world that Chris Carter foresaw happening almost 30 years ago.”

But then again, Duchovny finds conspiracies to be “mostly just lazy thinking.” He doesn’t consider himself as more empirical than FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder, his character. The actor said, "Not at all. I’m an artist — I am associative-based and I see poetry as science and science as poetry.”

Life beyond The X-Files

Duchovny and Gillian Anderson starred in The X-Files, which ran for nine seasons between 1993 and 2002. This series resurfaced twice from 2016 to 2018. They also made two movies around it.

Duchovny explained why he walked out halfway through season 8 of the show: “That was just me wanting to have a family, but also to try other things. It had kind of taken up my life.”

However, he stressed that he had no issues with either his colleagues or those who worked on it; “I am proud of the show — it was culturally central in a way that it’s very hard to do these days in a fragmented landscape. There’s so many lightning-strike aspects to it that I can’t help but think of it as some kind of a miracle,” he added.

The future of The X-Files

A year ago, Ryan Coogler revealed that Chris Carter wants to revive The X-Files with a diverse cast. Coogler, best known for directing Black Panther, inked a five-year exclusive contract with Disney Television under his Proximity Media imprint.

“So, he’s got his work cut out for him because we covered so much territory,” Carter said on the On the Coast podcast. On this note, Coogler noted that a modern update would look different as “we’re steeped in conspiracies” today.

While fringe conspiracy theories were explored in The X-Files, many aspects of today’s reality ring true to the show's fictional world. Duchovny’s thoughts confirm the lasting unchanging power of The X-Files and how it predicted changes in conspiracy theory over time.

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