Is There Life After The X-Files?
Since the beginning of television every generation has had its classic series. They’ve illuminated our screens and become cultural phenomenons celebrated by viewers and remembered with reverence. The US has shows such as I Love Lucy, Star Trek, and M*A*S*H; the UK has shows including Doctor Who, Fawlty Towers, and Only Fools and Horses. Even if we’re not fans of these titans of television we can’t escape their influence on our popular culture.
But what happens after their reign on TV has ended? For viewers we can rewatch them in syndication, buy the box sets, and stream them online (if they’re available). We can also find new shows that we hope may fill the absence.
For the people who worked on these shows — whether they be actors, writers, producers, showrunners, and so on — leaving such cultural behemoths behind and moving forward with their careers can be a challenging prospect. Often talents synonymous with massively popular TV series struggle to move away from what made them household and worldwide names. The careers of cast and crew members may be forever pared down to a single role by fans, critics and time.
Think of the cast of popular sitcoms like Cheers, Friends, and Seinfeld: how many of those shows’ stars have been allowed to move on from their popular roles? George Wendt cannot escape being Norm Peterson from Cheers. To millions of Friends fans Matthew Perry will always be Chandler Bing. Michael Richards is Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld. (It’s not always this way. There are generations of children who know John Ratzenberger for his voice work in Pixar movies and have never seen him as Cliff Clavin in Cheers.)
It would be fair to say that the bigger a TV show becomes the harder it is for those involved to escape its cultural pull. In the 90s Baywatch had a worldwide audience of a billion people watching David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson running in slow motion along the beachfront. Who among the cast of Baywatch has moved past the show’s iconic-if-dated, popular-but-cheesy legacy? How many of them continue to earn a living from the show based on our cultural nostalgia?
Every TV viewer has at least one series that means more to them than all the others. For my brother and me, in the 90s, that series was The X-Files. We were and continue to be die-hard fans, though my brother has the edge in fandom. We watched the new episodes on broadcast, rewatched them on home VHS, then the DVD box sets, and most recently via the remastered Blu-ray collection. Posters, T-shirts, books, mugs: we own them. We’re not alone in our love for The X-Files — millions of fans view the show as a classic in the pantheon of genre television, enough so that 20th Century Fox revived the series with a six episode tenth season in 2016 and another underway.
Because the show is so admired it can be argued that many in the cast and crew of The X-Files have experienced a similar fate as other popular series. Have any of them found critical and popular success after the series first ended? Who among them has had the greatest prosperity post The X-Files?
(Note: the following appraisals and observations are based on my opinions. Feel free to disagree with me if you don’t share my viewpoint.)
In Front of the Lens
While the cast of the X-Files featured dozens of recurring characters over its original nine series run David Duchovny’s Fox Mulder and Gillian Anderson’s Dana Scully were the core of the show’s storytelling. Mulder was the intelligent but unorthodox federal agent who believed in the paranormal, and Scully was his skeptic FBI partner who challenged his wild hypotheses and speculation with reason and science fact. The dynamic between them captured audiences and ensured the series’ long lasting success.
In the years since the series ended in 2002 David Duchovny has starred in several films, most notably Ivan Reitman’s sci-fi comedy Evolution where he fights against an alien invasion, and headlined two TV series, Californication and Aquarius (the former ran for seven seasons while the latter lasted only two). While I can’t speak for Aquarius, having never seen it, I did watch Californication on-and-off for three seasons before giving up. Where the character of Fox Mulder played to Duchovny’s strengths as an actor his film and other TV appearances are less memorable or iconic. Even after his subsequent efforts in TV who do we think of him as first and foremost: Fox Mulder, Hank Moody or Sam Hodiak?
Watching Gillian Anderson’s career after The X-Files is a whole different story. Her output in film, theatre and TV in particular has seen her become a respected and dependable acting talent by viewers in both primary and supporting roles. She has demonstrated her acting prowess in period dramas such as the BBC’s adaptations of Dickens’ Bleak House and Great Expectations, The Crimson Petal and the White, and 2015’s War and Peace. And in the second and third seasons of Bryan Fuller’s exquisite but cut-short Hannibal series she played the minor but critical role of Dr. Lecter’s psychiatrist, Bedelia Du Maurier, with aplomb. Perhaps her most celebrated recent role has been in the BBC series The Fall, playing a powerful but troubled Metropolitan police detective on the hunt for a perverse, sadistic killer in Dublin. (I had problems with where the series went in the second half of season two and ended in season three, but Anderson’s performance remained excellent throughout.)
Of the two I feel that Gillian Anderson has fared better professionally than her X-Files co-star. She has become more to audiences than being just FBI agent Dana Scully, something I feel David Duchovny has not fully overcome.
Behind the Scenes
In addition to the cast the writers and producers of The X-Files have had mixed success following its conclusion in the early 2000s. Where some have moved on to proverbial new pastures others remain entwined with the series to the present.
After David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson the most famous name associated with The X-Files is its creator, Chris Carter. For better and for worse he attempted to keep the series alive and relevant after its televisual ending, directing the second film X-Files: I Want to Believe, which was poorly received and considered at the time to be the death knell for the franchise. In 2016 Carter succeeded in getting a new (albeit short) season on our screens that was largely underwhelming to fans and new viewers.
Brothers Darin and Glen Morgan (of Space: Above and Beyond fame) were contributing writers (Glen was also a producer) early in the series’ run. During season 3 Darin Morgan wrote some of the funniest episodes of The X-Files ever made, including “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” and “Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space’”, and later returned to write the best episode of season 10, “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster”. In the late 90s Glen Morgan left the show to write and produce the supernatural horror movies Final Destination and Final Destination 3.
While The X-Files was on air in the 90s Chris Carter and Glen Morgan branched out to create another paranormal-themed series, Millennium, starring genre staple Lance Henriksen. Critics and viewers enjoyed the show, though Frank Black didn’t garner nearly as much attention or high ratings as Mulder and Scully did. Cancelled after three seasons the series received a finale via a crossover episode with Carter’s more popular and still-running show at the time.
Perhaps the most successful man behind scenes after The X-Files ended has been Vince Gilligan. As a writer and producer for the show he went on to work with AMC to create and script what is considered to be among the best TV series ever made, Breaking Bad, which then received it’s own spinoff in 2015, Better Call Saul. (However, few people watched or remember his other show in between, Battle Creek — you can’t score a hit every time.) Gilligan also worked with Chris Carter to create The X-Files spinoff The Lone Gunmen, which was cancelled after one season in 2001.
Post The X-Files its alumni have experienced varying degrees of fortune in the last 15 years. Of the whole I think Gillian Anderson and Vince Gilligan have made the most substantial gains beyond the show’s fanbase and cultural influence.
Television still has an immutable power to govern cast and crewmembers’ lives long after a show has finished. Actors continue to experience problems with their careers after having starred in massive TV series. To many people Aaron Paul will always be Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad. And can Kit Harrington be anything more to audiences than Jon Snow after Game of Thrones ends? The same dilemma also applies to writers and producers and showrunners.
The paradox of being part of a hit TV show is that it can open doors to new opportunities in front of and behind the camera, but it can also personally limit them in the face of popular culture. The risk is that fandom and popular entertainment will remember them for one role, no matter how hard they may try to be more. There are no guarantees or solutions to prevent actors and crew members from being pigeonholed — the only thing to do is to keep working, rise above, and not give up.
Who knows, there may be hope yet.
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