DAVID DUCHOVNY TUNES INTO THE TV SET

David Duchovny recognizes the pitfalls of television as he once starred in his own famous series.

David Duchovny stars in The TV Set as the writer of a television pilot who is at the mercy of Sigourney Weaver’s dragon lady television executive making ridiculous last minute changes to his script.

The X-Files star who played agent Fox Mulder for nine years is all too familiar with the politics behind making a television episode work.

“I was once shooting an episode of the X-Files that I wrote and the character who was established and who I wrote the show about got sick after the first day of filming and it became clear to me that he wasn’t going to be back ever so I had to kind of come up with a ridiculous scene in which another guy introduces himself. It’s like a soap opera where he says, ‘I will be that guy you already know,’ so I just wrote this scene where he said, ‘that we both had the same name. Our parents found one name and they liked it.’ And then you move on.”

David who recently shot an untitled pilot for Showtime knows what goes into getting a series green lit for broadcast.

“It doesn’t change my opinion about making TV pilots. I think I knew it’s collaborative, making movies is collaborative. Look at the credits at the end of a movie you got, it takes 10 minutes for that roll to end so all those people had some kind of influence on the film. It’s not just the executives, it’s everybody so you know trying to fulfill a vision is kind of a crazy crazy project to think you can actually do because if you write a screenplay you are asking other people to be involved and that’s kind of the fun and the craziness of the film.”

All systems are go on the X-Files film. David and his partner in crime Gillian Anderson are awaiting the final script approval from writers Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz who are hammering it out with Fox.