Duchovny's Commanding Second Act

Mario Anzuoni / Reuters David Duchovny, star of Californication, on his literary ambitions, making a third X-Files movie, and his quest for an “uncensored id.”

Very few actors manage to create a Zeitgeist-defining character, let alone two, but David Duchovny—best known for playing alien-obsessed Special Agent Fox Mulder on The X-Files—has defied the odds with the Showtime original series Californication, which earned him a second Golden Globe for his portrayal of misanthropic, sex-addled novelist Hank Moody. The role was largely informed by Duchovny’s time as a Yale doctoral student in his 20s, a decade before he became a household name.

“I envisioned that as my life: staying in academia to make a living and then taking summers off to write my novels,” Duchovny says. “I understand the self-loathing and the resentment, and the discipline that it takes to sit down in front of a typewriter or computer every single day, whether it’s going well or not going well … I didn’t need to research how to be a professor [for Californication’s third season] because I’d already been a teaching assistant when I was pursuing my Ph.D.; it was a very clear memory.”

“The key to Hank Moody, certainly for me in acting him, is that he’s one of those guys who don’t give a fuck, just like Larry David’s character, which is a wish-fulfillment fantasy for all of us.”

It's bizarre to think of a TV and movie star qualifying for Ivy League graduate degrees—prior to succeeding in Hollywood anyway—but in conversation Duchovny is accordingly cerebral and insightful. When asked about his knack for playing self-assured characters despite his personal insecurities (he is quoted as saying, “I’ve always been overly concerned about what people think, which has resulted in a lot of inner turmoil; I try not to give a damn but inside I'm a huge ball of worry”), he waxes poetic about the creative individual’s place in our stratified, hypercritical society.

“That’s a part of the human condition,” Duchovny says. “In this age of media and Internet access, we are much more talkative than ever before. We all participate daily in this shaming of the exiles and deifying of the leaders. We care about perception because we’re all utilizing human consciousness; we aren’t loners—we don’t live alone as animals—so it’s written into our genes in a way.” Nevertheless, social anxiety bothers him less than it did in the past: “As I get older, I’m less attentive and concerned with it. I don’t want to not give a fuck about how other people feel, but I don’t need to go on Twitter and see what everyone is saying about what I did yesterday.”

This brand of carefree authenticity is the defining trait of his Californication character. “The key to Hank Moody, certainly for me in acting him, is that he’s one of those guys who don’t give a fuck, just like Larry David’s character, which is a wish-fulfillment fantasy for all of us. Hank is not going to rein himself in at all because his life is a performance of his work. He’s superstitious that if he isn’t interesting, then his work won’t be interesting.” It is a quality Duchovny admires in the lucky few who possess it. “I’ve run into certain geniuses of individualism—they are very few and far between—who live their lives completely on their own terms; they are very powerful and have a great amount of happiness. We all should aspire to that.”

Bringing such an “uncensored id” to the screen has been one of Duchovny’s favorite experiences as an actor, and he says that “TV is a better written medium at this point” than movies. “When the work is good and interesting and funny and moving, that’s when I have fun,” Duchovny says. “I’ve been guilty of not having fun occasionally, and nobody likes to watch that.”

One of those downers was getting typecast as Fox Mulder for many years, essentially parodying and regurgitating the character in Evolution, Zoolander, and various sci-fi videogames.