David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson’s The X Files is widely regarded as one of the best-ever shows created and aired on Fox. Even today, after around half a decade since its eleventh and final season aired in 2018, the 218-episode-long mystery/thriller drama series doesn’t cease to amuse its viewers with all the incredible storylines the writers and showrunners curated.
But not many know that there was once a time when all of that drama, mystery, and sci-fi thrills almost didn’t happen. This was because the media broadcasting company wasn’t originally looking for such genre projects at the time, and thus, it almost ended up making a disastrous call for this masterpiece series that has been loved by 93% of Google users to date.
Fox Was Originally ‘Reluctant’ to Greenlight The X Files
Back in the 1990s, before The X Files even went into production, Fox wasn’t one of the most major power players and was even referred to as ‘the coat-hanger network’ by former NBC prez. Brandon Tartikoff. But the David Duchovny-starrer thriller would soon change that for the network.
However, before it could do that, the executives at the broadcasting company almost turned down the show.
As Chris Carter, the mastermind who created the smash-hit series, shared with The Hollywood Reporter, he had an idea of how he wanted his show to be “something in the vein of Kolchak: The Night Stalker” but more supernatural when Peter Roth hired him “to develop TV shows.”
Inspired by Dr. John Mack’s scientific survey about 10% of Americans believing they had “contact with, been abducted by or believed in extraterrestrials,” he developed a story along the same lines.
However, the media broadcasting network wasn’t quite looking for science fiction shows at the time, let alone anything including the supernatural mystery that Carter’s saga held. As Bob Greenblatt, the former vice prez. of the primetime programming network shared during the same interview:
We had a blind deal with Chris. We thought he was going to pitch a family or teenage soap, so we were surprised when he brought us high-concept science fiction.
In fact, this surprise went a lot further than that, considering how they even seemingly started weighing in options of turning it down since they were hesitant to take it on. As Greenblatt admitted:
We were reluctant to develop it because we didn’t have any other drama like it and weren’t in the market for sci-fi.
But then they were stopped from making this disastrous call as Danielle Gelber, the former director of drama development at the respective network, realized just how passionate Carter was for it all.
During the same interview with THR, she explained just how Chris Carter “had the most passionate, focused, dimensional, whole construct I’ve ever heard” — something that caught her attention so much that she decided to give it a chance. But not without asking Carter to elaborate on his ideas.
Needless to say, Chris Carter didn’t hesitate to leave them even more “fascinated” as he returned to them with “this 15- or 20-page document that was riveting.” This very document had Gelber “terrified, chilled to the bone” after reading the pilot late at night, alone at her home.
Soon enough, the masterpiece show was greenlit, and Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were brought on board to star in the respective roles of Dana Scully and Fox Mulder — ones that would go on to be the roles this iconic duo would forever be remembered by.
That reminds us: Recently, Duchovny actually had something to say about his “immediate connection” with Anderson on the sets of this very masterpiece series.
David Duchovny Gets Candid About ‘Immediate Connection’ Shared With Gillian Anderson
While the connection that viewers sensed between this iconic duo onscreen was one thing, it was felt in real life by the actors as well. This was recently confirmed by Duchovny himself, who got candid about sharing the screen with Anderson for The X Files in an interview with PEOPLE.
Explaining how their “connection” was as instant as their characters, he said:
I think immediately, when we were reading together on the stairs to go in to audition, we knew that we could work together. There was an immediate connection through the work that we could do, and that lasted for a long, long time.
Well, there’s certainly no doubt of that, considering how Duchovny and Anderson are still regarded as two of the most wholesome and worth-watching onscreen crime-partners to date.
You can stream The X Files on Hulu.
