But my manager, bless her, said she had a feeling about The X-Files - and that I needed to pay rent.ĬARTER Dave and Gillian weren’t necessarily shoo-ins for the parts due most prominently to one loud voice that wanted someone other than them. And because I was an elitist and thought myself an artist, I was going to do movies.
I went in just like any normal audition.ĭAVID DUCHOVNY (Fox Mulder) In 1993, there was an elitist division between movie actors and TV actors. I was out of work, and we were living in Villa Carlotta. GILLIAN ANDERSON (Dana Scully) I had left New York to go visit my boyfriend and decided to stay in Los Angeles. GELBER I remember reading the pilot alone in my house late at night and being terrified, chilled to the bone.Ĭarter directed 10 episodes of the original run, the 2008 film and three episodes of the 2016 revival.Ī speedy pilot order tasks Carter and company with their biggest job: casting the show’s two leads, an analytical FBI agent and her conspiracy theorist partner. I was looking for whatever the Fox version of a procedural could be - a cop show or a medical show with Fox topspin. My mandate was to make really good shows that spoke to a younger demographic that had been largely disenfranchised by the Big Three. SANDY GRUSHOW (former president, Fox Entertainment Group) Shortly after the pitch was bought, Peter Chernin left to replace Joe Roth on the feature film side.
We had an entire slate of drama in development. GARY NEWMAN (former vp business affairs, 20th Century Fox Television) What I very distinctly remember that fall was going to a meeting with Peter Roth and our management basically telling us that the hourlong business was impossible and we couldn’t make any money doing it. He came back with this 15- or 20-page document that was riveting. GELBER We were fascinated, but it begged so many questions. Chris had the most passionate, focused, dimensional, whole construct I’ve ever heard from anybody.ĬARTER Danielle and Bob didn’t say yes to the first pitch. The X-Files was the first pitch from my first season. We told everybody who came in the door that we knew we were the last stop on the train. 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.ĭANIELLE GELBER (former director of drama development, Fox) Fox was still being called “the coat-hanger network” by Brandon Tartikoff.
We thought he was going to pitch a family or teenage soap, so we were surprised when he brought us high-concept science fiction.
It said that 10 percent of Americans believed they had contact with, been abducted by or believed in extraterrestrials.īOB GREENBLATT (former executive vp primetime programming, Fox) We had a blind deal with Chris. It was partly inspired by the shows of my youth, The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery, but I had recently come upon a scientific survey done by Dr. We were both interested in something in the vein of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and I already had an idea. And be again.Ī comedy writer, best known for Disney telepics, pitches a drama about aliens and government conspiracy to a group of rising execs at an afterthought network.ĬHRIS CARTER (creator) I was hired by Peter Roth to develop TV shows when he moved to 20th. 24), the people most responsible for the enduring franchise sound off - for the first time in the same place - about how the show came to be. But as Fox readies a six-episode revival (starting Jan.
The X-Files‘ complicated mythology, both real and scripted, makes its history the source of endless pop-culture autopsies. 'The X-Files': 21-Minute Feature Offers Look Inside the Revival