X-Files mythology, TenThirteen Interviews Database, and more

Posts Tagged ‘gillian anderson’

XF at SDCC 2013, Part 1: XF3, BluRay, Carter projects

More than any other event earlier this year, and I expect more than any even for the remainder of 2013, The X-Files‘ 20th anniversary was celebrated at San Diego Comic Con International 2013. The size of the event and the media coverage it got is the reason why this was a key event. The big panel was hosted by TV Guide, the second panel by Season 10 comics publisher IDW, and then there were of course signings and pricey photo shoots.

X-Files’ 20th anniversary

sdcctvguide

This was the biggest cast & crew reunion since the Paley Festival in 2008. From right to left: host Michael Schneider; Chris Carter; David Duchovny; Gillian Anderson; James Wong; Glen Morgan; John Shiban; Darin Morgan; Howard Gordon; Vince Gilligan; and out of frame, David Amann (photo from syzzlyn). From the writing team, you could say that all the people who shaped the show were there, apart from Frank Spotnitz (in Europe, busy with other projects) and Gordon’s writing partner Alex Gansa. As would be expected in such media-intensive events, the focus was much more on Anderson and Duchovny instead of the rest of the creative team — given how short the panel was, some of them only spoke once!

Video of nearly the full panel

Video of the full panel

Host Michael Schneider posted a kind of “making of” of the whole event, which is a very entertaining read but is also revealing. The panel was organized by TV Guide, and within TV Guide, Schneider played an essential role: in inviting people and handling the organization of the event on the day. The involvement of FOX is nowhere to be seen apart from their mere approval. Still, we guess that they were watching, gauging interest in the X-Files to see if it has a future. The fans were certainly there!

More after the jump.

(more…)

Moviehole: Exclusive : What are the chances of an X-Files 3?

Jan-20-2013
Exclusive : What are the chances of an X-Files 3?
Moviehole
Sandi Hicks

[Original here]

For as long as I can remember, I have had one passion. It involves two FBI agents, and their tireless search for ‘the truth’. For years we watched them investigate hundreds of bizarre cases – from liver eating mutants through to alien abductions and super soldiers.

For those familiar with ”The X-Files” mythology – Series creator Chris Carter’s finale ‘The Truth’ provided a pathway and a date for the final alien invasion that would come with the end of the series movie, which would ultimately finalize the franchise. At a charity event that was held in Los Angeles in July 2011, series creator Mr. Carter expressed his eagerness to complete the project and have it premiere on December 22nd 2012.

This date has since come and gone.

Thousands of fans write to Executive Producer Frank Spotnitz, via his website biglight.com asking him about when ”X-Files 3” is happening. The resounding message that ultimately comes from Mr. Spotnitz contain three words – “Don’t Give Up” (quite often shortened to D.G.U.) which was the recurring mantra of the second feature film ”The X-Files: I Want To Believe” (2008). Speaking with Moviehole, Mr. Spotnitz had the following to say about a third movie, “It took six years after the end of the TV series to get the last X-Files movie made. I hope it won’t be another six years before the next one gets released, but I’ll wait however long it takes.”

The second feature film was thought to be shunned by audiences due to its ‘summer blockbuster’ release alongside ”The Dark Knight”, and also largely because the story didn’t follow the mythology of the series. People were expecting an “end of the world, alien movie” and instead they got a stand alone feature film, which was basically a love letter to the ”X-Files” Fandom.

Largely misunderstood by so many, the film still went on to earn over $64 Million dollars worldwide, which was well over double the cost to produce.

“The last thing I heard from Chris (Carter) was that he was in the process of writing the script.” says Gillian Anderson, speaking exclusively to Moviehole. “As exciting as that sounds, and it is exciting, the script is the first of 10 million steps. And also, script writing in itself is a dubious process. I, for one, have been working on one for a decade. But Chris is not me and he is used to turning them out and, fingers crossed, he will turn one out that (20th Century) Fox wants to throw millions of dollars into making.”

Furthermore to the question that would the franchises principal actors return for the final installment, Ms. Anderson had a comical response, poking fun at the ‘tabloid rumours’ that circulated around the internet in 2012, “The answer to the next inevitable question is yes, should the latter happen, David (Duchovny) and I (I can answer for him because we live together) would be on board to do it. Given that we haven’t split up by then which would just be plain awkward.”

During promotion of the previous film ”The X-Files: I Want To Believe”, Ms. Anderson told fans to go out and see the last movie at least 10 times via her own website, GillianAnderson.ws – and most fans did just that!

Moreover, don’t discount the various worldwide fandom campaigns that have been conducted by XFilesNews.com, the only fandom website that is officially affiliated with 20th Century Fox. The dedicated fans that run this website have made the studio very aware of the audience presence that is still out there, awaiting closure.

So what is the hold up? The writers, producers, and actors are all on board.

Given an amazing script, the return of the award winning cast, and a superb score via the musical genius Mark Snow, who is responsible for all previous soundtrack work for the show and feature films, I believe that audiences would flock to see how the franchise is wrapped up.

So, what is the likelihood of ”X-Files 3” happening in 2013?
It all comes down to 20th Century Fox.
Don’t give up! We want to believe.

ScienceFiction.com: Gillian Anderson Brings Hope For An ‘X-Files 3’ Film

Aug-28-2012
Gillian Anderson Brings Hope For An ‘X-Files 3’ Film
ScienceFiction.com
Janice Kay

[Original article]

Ever since the release of ‘The X-Files: I Want to Believe’ 4 years ago, fans have been clamoring for a third ‘X-Files’ film, mainly to redeem the franchise from that last film. Everyone from the stars, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, to the producer, Frank Spotnitz, and creator Chris Carter seem to be on board. Everyone, that is, except Fox. Now it seems something is progressing as Gillian Anderson gave some news that has X-Philes rather excited.

Anderson was in Toronto as part of a panel at the Fan Expo Canada last weekend. According to a tweet from X-Files News who was at the event, a fan had asked about the possibility of a third ‘X-Files’ film. Anderson replied, “I met with (series creator Chris Carter) before coming here and it’s looking pretty good. We (just) have to convince FOX (Studios).”

That may be easier said than done. The TV series became highly successful during its nine year run and fans of the show flocked to see the movie version in theaters earning ‘The X-Files: Fight The Future’ $189 million at the box officeworldwide. Of course it had the advantage of being released during its TV run. ‘The X-Files: I Want to Believe’, however, was released 6 years after the show was cancelled and failed to attract the same interest only earning $68 million worldwide, so convincing the studios to put money into this franchise may be a hard sell.

In an interview with Collider earlier this month, Duchovny had his own explanation as to why the second ‘X-Files’ film didn’t do so well:

“One of the greatnesses of the show was its open-endedness.  It was about possibility.  It wasn’t about closure.  It just couldn’t be.  There is no such thing as that story ever ending.  Those characters are forever searching.  That’s what they do.  Even if we’re not watching them, they’re out there, in some dimension.  Mulder and Scully are still doing their thing ‘cause that’s their nature.

I would love to do another film, or more.  I think we’re all game for it.  I know I’m kind of perplexed that Fox isn’t more (enthusiastic).  Here’s a homegrown property that you don’t have to go buy, like fuckin’ ‘Green Lantern’ or something, to make it.  Here you’ve got an actual action franchise that’s your own.  It’s weird to me, but I’m not an executive. … Why not make a homegrown franchise that is excellent, and that has proven to be excellent and interesting?”  I don’t get it, but that’s not my business.

I think Chris (Carter) is probably working on an idea, so we’ll see.  Unfortunately, with the last one, they didn’t spend the money to compete in a summer fashion, and they brought it out in the summer.  It should be a summer film.  It should be an action film.  But, the last one we made was not.  The last one we made was a dark, contemplative, small $25 million film.  It was basically an independent film.  When you come out against ‘Batman,’ it’s not going to happen.”

Hopefully we’ll know pretty soon what Carter has up his sleeve that has made Anderson excited enough to be able to make an announcement as she did! After all, interest in the franchise still remains high even after all these years.

What do you think? Would you want to see a third ‘The X-Files’ film?

The Daily Beast: Gillian Anderson on ‘X-Files,’ ‘Downton Abbey,’ ‘Great Expectations’

Mar-28-2012
Gillian Anderson on ‘X-Files,’ ‘Downton Abbey,’ ‘Great Expectations’
The Daily Beast

[Original article]

Gillian Anderson, famous for ‘The X-Files,’ stuns as Miss Havisham in Sunday’s ‘Great Expecations.’ She tells Jace Lacob about turning down ‘Downton Abbey,’ her British accent—and possibly playing Scully again.

Gillian Anderson is no stranger to strange worlds.

The former star of The X-Files, which became a worldwide hit and spawned two feature films, Anderson has, for now anyway, traded in Dana Scully’s FBI-issued handgun and severe suits for the tight-laced corsets and flowing frocks of such period dramas as Bleak House, The House of Mirth, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, The Crimson Petal and the White, Moby Dick, and Any Human Heart, in which she played a deliciously conniving Wallace Simpson, complete with a false nose. But it’s Anderson’s jaw-dropping turn as Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, which airs Sunday evening on PBS’s Masterpiece Classic after a three-night run in December on BBC One, that erases any trace of Scully’s bravado.

An Anderson role in a period piece seems de rigueur these days: she was also very nearly in ITV’s critically acclaimed costume drama Downton Abbey, but turned down an offer to play Lady Cora Crawley, a role that went to fellow American Elizabeth McGovern. “They’re still mad at me,” Anderson told The Daily Beast. “Every time I see [creator] Julian Fellowes, he says, ‘Why?’ I’m very finicky.”

It’s no surprise that after her legendary turn as the emotionally haunted Lady Dedlock in Andrew Davies’s 2005 adaptation of Bleak House, which earned her Emmy Award and Golden Globe nominations, Anderson has a fascination with severe or extreme characters. In Great Expectations, adapted from the Charles Dickens novel by Sarah Phelps and directed by Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones), she stars as the malevolent and tragic Miss Havisham, whose blackened heart leads her to destroy the innocence of young Pip (Douglas Booth) and Estella (Vanessa Kirby), and doom whatever chance of love either has.

gillian-anderson-interview-lacob-main
Todd Antony / Courtesy of BBC Pictures

There was much grumbling in the British press about Anderson being the youngest actress to play Miss Havisham, who is traditionally portrayed as a skeletal old woman still dressed in the tattered vestiges of her wedding gown, clutching at the last shreds of her youth, while already standing in her grave. (Helena Bonham Carter will play the role in a feature film version of Great Expectations, out later this year.)

“I appreciate the purists out there who have studied Dickens,” said Anderson, elegantly dressed in a flowing white blouse and gray skirt, and seated in an empty banquet room at the Langham Hotel in Pasadena. “But the facts are, from my understanding, Miss Havisham is around 50. That is not far from 43, which is what I am. They keep talking about me being the absolute youngest, when actually the actress who played her in David Lean’s version was 46.”

“I expected when I kept reading this stuff that I was going to read that she was 75,” she said of Martita Hunt, who played the wild-haired Miss Havisham in the 1946 classic. “They just have to harp on something.”

“If a good script comes along for another film, then I’m up for it and so is David. So is [creator] Chris [Carter]. I don’t see any reason not to do it.”

Indeed, by making Miss Havisham closer to Pip’s age, the production has heightened the sense of tension, both sexual and psychological, between the two characters. “She’s not an old crow and fawning after these children, which would end up being really creepy,” said Anderson. Likewise, an additional patina of tragedy is added to the deeply disturbed character, whom Anderson imbues with a blend of ghostly transparency and obsessive madness. Pip telling her that she could have filled her decrepit home, Satis House, with children of her own cuts even deeper—she still could choose to open herself up to love. Instead, her downfall is that she can’t let go of the poison in her heart or the heartbreak in her past.

Anderson herself is more or less a Dickens novice. Her experience of the author, who would be celebrating his 200th birthday this year, is limited to her own work in adaptations of Great Expectations and Bleak House.

“I can’t remember if it was high school or college, but I attempted to read A Tale of Two Cities and I don’t recall getting through it,” she said. “I don’t think I gave him more thought until he came into my life in this respect. One of the only things that I have regrets about in my life is my experience of school and education. I wish I had known how important it was to pay attention … My first foray into a lot of the classics has been through my work. It’s only after falling in love with the screenplay or adaptation that I’ve then gone on to read the novels themselves.”

Anderson was a bit of a teenage hellion. A far cry from the sleek and sophisticated star these days, the teenage Anderson dyed her hair multiple colors and had her nose pierced. (In an infamous anecdote, she was arrested on the eve of her graduation for trying to glue the gates of her school shut, but according to an interview in US Weekly, she got off with community service and spent a week cleaning a YMCA.) Born in Chicago, she was shuttled with her family around the world for much of her childhood: a stint in Puerto Rico as a baby, a childhood spent in London, and then, at age 11, her formative years spent in Grand Rapids, Mich., where her English accent marked her as an instant outsider.

That accent still turns up on occasion, particularly when she appears on British talk shows like The Graham Norton Show or Parkinson, where Anderson deploys the cut-glass tones of one of her well-heeled characters. On this day, however, there is not a trace of Britannia in Anderson’s speech.

“When I’m in London, my partner’s British, my kids are British, and I’m surrounded by Brits,” she said, laughing. “It’s near to impossible for me to maintain my American accent in the midst of that. My first language was with a British accent … I could understand why it would be confusing for people in the States who aren’t used to me with a British accent, but I didn’t lose my British accent until well into college. Even when I started doing The X-Files, I was only a few years away from having decidedly losing it. It’s completely natural to me. When I try, in London, to not speak with a British accent or to keep it American, I just sound like a f–king idiot. It turns into some weird eurotrash thing.”

It was Anderson who raised the specter of The X-Files during the interview. After playing skeptical FBI Special Agent Dana Scully in Fox’s science-fiction thriller for nine seasons and costarring with David Duchovny in two spinoff feature films, 1998’s The X-Files and 2008’s The X-Files: I Want to Believe, Anderson was widely believed to have finished with the character and the alien-themed franchise. Not so.

“Not at all,” she said. “If a good script comes along for another film, then I’m up for it and so is David. So is [creator] Chris [Carter]. I don’t see any reason not to do it if the script is good and Fox wants to go ahead and put the money behind it. Now I don’t know if there’s a script, I don’t know whether Fox is even remotely interested, so it’s completely out of my hands. But I’d be up for it.”

Still, the entrenchment of Scully in pop culture has had its potential pitfalls, given how long Anderson portrayed the religious medical doctor-turned-FBI-field agent—she appeared in all but four of the show’s 202 episodes—and there was the risk that the actress could be pigeonholed afterward.

“There was definitely that concern coming off the series and wanting to do as many different things as possible,” Anderson said. “There is an argument that every time I decide to do another [X-Files] feature, it complicates that even more in that it solidifies me in the audience’s mind more as that character … [But] I’m not going to choose not to do it because people might be closed-minded.”

While another possible X-Files film percolates in the background, Anderson will star in the five-episode BBC Two psychological thriller The Fall, which will be shot in Belfast beginning this month and air later this year. In the project, from writer Allan Cubitt (Prime Suspect), she’ll play Metropolitan Police Detective Superintendent Gibson, who travels to Belfast to hunt a serial killer who is striking at random. The action swivels around the lives of those enmeshed in the killing spree: the victims’ families, the murderer, and Gibson herself.

“It’s so good,” said Anderson. “It’s like a miniseries; it’s only five episodes. It’s as close to Prime Suspect as I’ve ever read, which is very exciting because that was so well done and I really like this character.”

For Anderson, who said she’d also love to do a play in New York, The Fall represents yet another opportunity to do something different, in this case, short-form programming with a limited run.

“Why there have to be so many rules about what one should or can or cannot do is just so bizarre,” she said. “This is a time for experimentation and certainly there are a couple of networks that have been dabbling in short stacks of [programming], and that’s always refreshing to hear. All the stuff that’s now being shot over in Europe instead of in the States feels like it’s becoming more international than ever.”

“Surely in the world,” she said, “there’s room for everything.”

Vulture: Gillian Anderson on Great Expectations, Reading to the Royals, and Her Madonna-Like British Accent

Mar-28-2012
Gillian Anderson on Great Expectations, Reading to the Royals, and Her Madonna-Like British Accent
Vulture
Jennifer Vineyard

[Original article here]

PBS’s long-running Masterpiece franchise is suddenly cool again, thanks to Downton Abbey, Sherlock, and some new dusted-off Dickens adaptations, the most recent of which features a ravishing Miss Havisham, played by Gillian Anderson. The British-American* actress, much beloved by American audiences for her stint as Dana Scully on The X-Files, previously portrayed Lady Dedlock in Bleak House. Now, for Great Expectations, she’s a white-haired wonder who wears her moldering old wedding dress as a reminder of the long-ago day she was jilted at the altar. This adaptation is a salute to the bicentennial of Dickens’s birthday, and it’ll air in two installments, the first on April 1, the second on April 8. Anderson, who nearly became a Downton resident herself, called from across the pond to chat about her latest transformation, becoming besties with the royals, and her inconsistent British accent.

You just did a royal reading of Great Expectations for Dickens’s 200th birthday.
Yes, and now I’m friends with all the royals. That was a joke. If we were friends, it was for all of two minutes. They asked me to do it, completely out of the blue, and it just seemed to be one of the things that you couldn’t say no to. Not that I would say no.

How did it go?
It was the funniest thing, because I wanted to ask the Prince of Wales if he wanted to sit down, and I was practicing how I was going to ask it, because you can’t just say, “Charles, sit down.” So that was highly amusing, figuring that out. And then what to read? I was deciding between a lot of different passages. I wanted something that would be approximately five to seven minutes long, with a lot of description and without a lot of characters, because I didn’t want to do too many voices. That might be distracting. So I decided on when Miss Havisham meets Pip for the first time, and his description of her, and the house, and all the mice and beetles crawling over the wedding cake.

Are you a big Dickens fan? This is your second role in an adaptation of his work.
You know, I have a list about as long as from here to eternity of all the things I’d like to read, and Dickens is on that list, but I’m not sure I love him above all the other classics. I’ve become more fond of Dickens since working on him, but I’m not necessarily a bigger fan of him than, say, Charlotte Brontë or Edith Wharton, who are some of my real favorites. But I am more and more a fan. He was a complicated man, and he had a certain genius.

Miss Havisham is a complicated woman. The way you play her, with that singsong voice, adds a beautiful lost-soul quality, as if she were a child who’s never grown up.
That’s an aspect of her. There’s a certain amount of childish spitefulness, too. I didn’t want her to be eaten away by resentment, because it’s not clear that it’s eaten her alive. There’s a lot more poetry to her than that, and that’s what I found in her voice after the first few readings. I thought of her like an addict. She was living vicariously through Estella. She fed on the information Estella would give her, jonesing for that fix, like it was a dose of heroin. And there was something about that state of craving, obsessing, jonesing, that makes her interesting.

Do you think she was playing a Victorian version of The Game? The way she teaches Estella to be a pickup artist of sorts, to always have the upper hand?
[Laughs.] That’s absolutely it! I think it’s all about how to break a man’s heart — to be alluring and seductive and then completely frigid and insulting. I absolutely imagined all of those things — and simpler lessons that were more about not giving, not being generous, not being kind, making fun of people. I would imagine how she would teach Estella to master that kind of control over somebody, how to walk in a room and draw them in, make them fall in love, and then treat them like shit. And she taught her that love was death.

You almost make her sound a little punk rock!
She is a little punk rock. [Laughs.] She’s got crazy hair. There’s three stages of wigs there.

A lot of people got caught up with how you’re the youngest actress to ever play her …
And yet I’m exactly the right age to play her — she’s in her early forties. People get so used to what’s come before. As much as the David Lean version was the be all and end all, that version portrays her in a much more outwardly haggard and spiteful way. Without getting into prosthetics, this is another take on how someone can age during twenty years of seclusion, with no access to light. And there’s something interesting about Pip being closer to her age once he gets older and realizing she’s subjected herself to this torture. She could have had happiness, a house filled with children. That’s the tragedy.

Have you seen the spoof where Miss Havisham’s sassy gay friend tells her to take off the dress, take a bath, and take advantage of online dating?
No! [Laughs.] But I love that! At one point, at a certain time, I would have definitely been up for spoofing The X-Files — back when people would have given a shit. You know, like an Airplane version. That would have been really funny.

People still give a shit! There’s an X-Files mash-up with Downton Abbey, since the theme songs are almost the same. Do you watch Downton Abbey?
It’s nuts, but I don’t watch anything. I don’t watch a single thing. I never have. But I’ve got friends who I respect who are obsessed with it, so there’s part of me that wants to. Michelle [Dockery, who plays Lady Mary] did something for one of my charities, so there’s a double whammy there.

You’re about to start shooting a new BBC series, The Fall, in which you would play a detective hunting a serial killer.
Law enforcement is my specialty! [Laughs.] It’s a very different character than Scully, because if it were remotely the same, I wouldn’t be doing it. But it’s actually fun to play law-enforcement chicks and keep them apart. In the first episode, there’s been a death and a son of a politician is implicated; all sorts of things go wrong in the investigation, and she’s there investigating the investigation, when she discovers links to other crimes. It’s a script as close to Prime Suspect as any I’ve ever read — not that they’re trying to re-create that. The American attempt didn’t do so good. But it’s a very compelling story, especially given that she’s British and working in Belfast.

You know, I’ve noticed you usually use a British accent when you’re interviewed by Brits, and an American accent when it’s someone from the U.S. Sometimes you slip between the two. Do you have a preference?
I don’t. It depends. You know, I’m so over it. [Laughs.] This was my first language, and someone in Tennessee convinced me that I should talk more “normally” when we moved to the U.S., and I learned how to do a Midwest accent. So I can slip into that. But this is how I learned to talk, and it comes naturally to me. I’m so sick of people talking about it! I’ve made a point from now on, even if it’s really, really hard, if I’m sitting in front of a Brit, I’m determined to talk in an American accent even if it kills me. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t fucking help it. [Laughs.] Even after talking a few minutes to my mom, this is how it comes out. I ended up in someone’s house today, she’s American, and she’s only been in England for four years, but she had a British accent, too. It’s not just me and Madonna!

*This post has been corrected to show Anderson was not born in England.

Herald Sun: The jest files

Sep-10-2011
The jest files
Herald Sun
James Wigney

[Original here]

600889-gillian-anderson

Gillian Anderson in Melbourne to promote her latest film Johnny English Reborn. Picture: Chris Scott Source: Sunday Herald Sun

DRAMA and thrills have left Gillian Anderson with a taste for comedy.

GILLIAN Anderson shot to fame as Special Agent Dana Scully over nine seasons of The X-Files. Since leaving the cult sci-fi hit nearly a decade ago, the Emmy and Golden Globe winning actor has shifted effortlessly between the stage (she was nominated for an Olivier award for her West End role in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House), TV (nominated for a BAFTA for Lady Dedlock in Dickens’ Bleak House) and film (two X-Files films, and The Last King of Scotland). The US-born, England-raised actor lives in London with her three children and partner Mark Griffiths. She visited Australia with co-star Rowan Atkinson this week to promote their film, James Bond spoof Johnny English Reborn.

What was the appeal of Johnny English Reborn for you – was it working with Rowan Atkinson?

It was a mixture of Rowan and the thought of playing the head of MI7. It sounded like a really cool thing to do. I could also see the potential in the script of what they were aiming for and the idea of it essentially being a James Bond with humour.

Are you a Bond fan?

I think I am a Bond fan like any other. I have all the Bond films but I haven’t seen one in a really long time. And if you really look at them, there are really only one or two really good ones. I think Goldfinger is one of them. The others are really just cheesy, bordering on parody.

All the Bond parallels in the film place you squarely in the shoes of Dame Judi Dench. Did you go back and watch what she had done as M?

I didn’t, because it’s clear that the two characters are quite different. But in thinking of her as M, I realised how much power she has as an actress to be able to basically whisper and allude to so much power over everybody. She doesn’t raise her voice at all. It’s really quite straight and laser-like. I found that fascinating.

Am I right in thinking you are both attached to a movie with the unlikely title of The Curse of the Buxom Strumpet?

Yes. I don’t know what’s going to happen with that. It’s a zombie film and that title is alluding to a ship. But we will see. If they get their financing together and we are both still available, then maybe. It’s quite funny.

Is there a big difference between Rowan Atkinson on and off set?

There is a big difference when the camera is actually rolling to the Rowan Atkinson off-set. Especially if there are physical gags involved. Very often it will be discussed, but he won’t necessarily go through the motions of it because it’s exhausting and he very much saves himself for when the camera is rolling. He is not one of those actors or comedians who spills out all over the place and you get it in spades before the take. It’s quite disconcerting when you are talking on an intellectual and technical level and all of a sudden the camera rolls and this master of comedy pops up out of nowhere.

Did you enjoy the comedy aspect?

Actually a good portion of the theatre I have done has been comedy and a fifth to a seventh of the X-Files were comedy episodes. I have done a couple of comedy films but I would actually like to get to be more funny. This is a straight character to Rowan’s comedy and I am very much interested in getting to be the comedian because I enjoy it very much.

You came very close with what you did on The Simpsons, but The X-Files is surely ripe for its own spoof?

We actually talked about it for a while. There has always been the idea that every few years we would come back and do another picture and within that there was always a desire that at some point we come back and do a spoof. It may be too late now but I love the idea of it. There is so much stuff we could pull from. There is one episode called Bad Blood which is actually one of my favourites and we kind of take the p— out of ourselves in that and it was so much fun to do.

I think a lot of people were hoping the second X-Files movie would answer a lot more questions. Were you happy?

I think that if we were to do a third one, it would answer a lot more of those questions and maybe also have something to do with aliens, which is ultimately what people want to see. David and I have been very vocal about the fact that if Chris or the studio were to come to us to do another one, we would do it. Recently Chris announced that it was likely to be in the works but I have no idea what that means or at what stage it is or who is writing it or whether Fox is even interested.

Do you miss Scully?

I miss her when I am together with David and Chris and we are reminiscing about it, or somebody is a particularly big fan and brings something up, but I don’t think about her on a daily basis. I think I am more appreciative of all that she was now than I was even at the time.

Why does the show continue to strike such a chord?

I have no idea. I really don’t know. There are new generations of fans out there, which always surprises me. I get letters from people who say ‘I’m 12 and I just started watching the series and I am so glad it’s out there. That’s cool.

You are becoming quite the Dickens specialist too, after Bleak House, and now you are playing Miss Havisham in Great Expectations. How do you go about breathing new life into these revered literary characters?

When I read a script I generally know on the first read whether that person is inside me somewhere, and that was a case where I got her. It’s my version of her, but there is something inside that went ‘Oh, I can do this. I get who this is’. Sometimes I read stuff and I just don’t get it – it doesn’t resonate. I get very specific images and vocal mannerisms, and then it’s just down to hoping they come together in the right way and other people agree you are on the right track. When I showed up to the set for Great Expectations I hadn’t really discussed that much with the director about the direction I was taking her, and it didn’t actually occur to me until the second day that he could have said ‘What the f— are you doing?’ I just really hope it’s good. It looks like it will be, but you never know.

You keep returning to the stage. What is it you get from theatre that you don’t get anywhere else?

It terrifies me. I hate it as much as I love it and I only decide to do something every few years because of that. Along the way there is at least 100 times where I go ‘Why did I subject myself to this again?’ But at the same time there is a part of me that is fed in a completely different way to anything else in that live process with an audience and discovering stuff in the moment and the danger of it.

Johnny English Reborn opens on Thursday.