Playing Fox Mulder made him a global phenomenon … then he walked away to save himself. As he stars in killer-nanny thriller Malice, David Duchovny talks art, his beef with Gillian Anderson – and being murdered by Jack Whitehall
H
alfway through our hour-long conversation, David Duchovny slumps in his seat a little then gently chastises me. “I got tired while you were talking,” he groans. In fairness, I had been talking a lot, but only because I was trying to list everything he’s managed to do in the past year.
There’s his podcast, Fail Better, in which he’s wrung incredibly candid interviews from notoriously reticent stars like Alec Baldwin and Robert Downey Jr, more on which later. There’s his book of poetry, About Time, which came out last month. There’s his History Channel show Secrets Declassified With David Duchovny. As we speak, he’s just finished an eight-date tour, where he performed songs from the three folk-rock albums he’s released over the last decade. We are ostensibly here to discuss Malice, his new Prime Video series. Had we spoken a couple of weeks later, God knows how many new projects he would have flung himself into. In other words, no wonder he’s tired.
But Malice is a good place to start. A six-part psychological thriller partly set in Greece, it’s a series where Duchovny’s boorish wealthy venture capitalist and his family are terrorised by a deranged nanny played by, of all people, Jack Whitehall. I have to confess that, at first glimpse, the premise sounded a little like one of those made-for-TV movies Channel 5 broadcasts on weekday afternoons. However, Malice was written by James Wood – the man who created the all-time great sitcom Rev – so its tone is enjoyably sharp and ripe. And anyone possessed with a desperate need to see David Duchovny’s buttocks will be fully satisfied within the first five minutes.
