Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny are in the midst of a heated conversation.
Fortunately they're standing before a camera, reprising their roles as FBI special agents Dana Scully and Fox Mulder for "The X-Files: I Want to Believe." Friday's release is a sequel to "The X-Files: Fight the Future" (1998), itself an offshoot of the landmark sci-fi/horror series "The X-Files" (1993-2002), which transformed Anderson and Duchovny into stars.
Anderson and Duchovny created onscreen magic, not to mention sexual tension. Mulder believed in aliens and government conspiracies, Scully was the skeptic, and "shippers" -- as the series' fans were called -- knew they belonged in each other's arms. Despite the chemistry, however, Anderson and Duchovny had a notoriously prickly offscreen relationship.
On set during a break from filming "I Want to Believe" in Vancouver, B.C., Anderson says this time around she and Duchovny are getting on fine. Absence made the heart grow fonder, the hours aren't as endless nor as draining, and they don't have yet another episode lurking over their shoulders.
"It's great, and it was great then too," Anderson says, looking thoroughly Scully-esque clad in black and with her hair dyed red. "It's just like a sibling relationship, you know?
"There was always this natural love-hate (with Duchovny)," she says. " 'Hate' is too big a word, but you know what I mean. There was always something, whether it was us coming together or us keeping our distance. Whatever it is, it's just a natural relationship, in the history, over a period of time.
"I think that now we've grown up and we're older, and we're more appreciative of the relationship, period, and the unique experience that we had together," Anderson says. "And we have an opportunity to continue that and foster it. We've always loved each other and we're always going to be at battle sometimes."
Chris Carter, series creator and "I Want to Believe" writer/producer/director, has cloaked the film's plot in secrecy, and Anderson refuses to spoil anything.
All that's known is that, dealing with a difficult case, Scully seeks the help of an embittered and ostracized Mulder, a request that sets in motion a stand-alone frightfest that involves a missing agent, a psychic (Billy Connolly), a manhunt and probably a few monsters lurking in the night.
Anderson hastens to add that "I Want to Believe" is also very much about Scully and Mulder.
On the series Scully started out as a deeply religious skeptic about the paranormal. By the end, however, after almost a decade of encounters with extraterrestrials, supernatural creatures and evil of all shapes and sizes, she had been converted into something of a believer. The film, Anderson acknowledges, revisits those themes.
"I think we have to," she says. "That's part of one of the big premises of the film, the relationship, and what makes the relationship work is this constant fight to be right in some way.
"I think, no matter what film or what episode, you have to maintain an element of that to make it interesting.
"This isn't a love story," the actress says. "It can be, and there are elements of that in the intimacy of the relationship, but that can't be in the forefront.
"What's in the forefront is these two people's minds and their passions, and naturally they're going to swing in the direction they're built for. That's going to cause tension between them and issues."
Anderson has kept busy since "The X-Files" ended six years ago.
On the personal front, she lives in London and is pregnant with her third child, her second with partner Mark Griffiths.
Professionally, Anderson appeared in the British miniseries "Bleak House" (2005) and the films "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story" (2005) and "The Last King of Scotland" (2006), as well as the upcoming comedies "How to Lose Friends & Alienate People" and "Boogie Woogie." She hosts "Masterpiece" on PBS and is shooting "The Smell of Apples," a drama about apartheid in 1970s South Africa.
The actress smiles when asked if, after surviving nine years of "The X-Files," she would ever consider starring in another weekly American television show.
"I'll never say 'never' because things change so much over time," Anderson says. "But it would have to be something pretty extraordinary (for me) to take that kind of time and move back to Los Angeles, where it's likely to be shot.
"But, you know, I'm 40 this year and I hope to still be working when I'm 60. So maybe, as a 60-year-old, I'll come back and do a comedy for NBC or something."
Anderson, whose birthday is Aug. 9, drops "40" matter-of-factly. More than a few actresses refuse to utter the word, of course, fearing it like a human-worm mutant or some other "X-Files" beastie.
"No, I'm cool with that," she says, laughing. "I'm actually looking forward to it. I saw this woman a few weeks ago with silver-white hair. I was in an airport, and I got filled with this sense of calm.
"I'm really enjoying the degree of acceptance that comes with just not taking things so seriously, (being) more able to let things go, not being so self-obsessed and concerned about my thighs, all that kind of crap, you know?
"It's just, 'I'm 40, I think I can have cellulite,' " Anderson says. "(But) talk to me in a couple of years, when there's a shot of me on a beach!"
-Ian Spelling (The New York Times)
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