Feature: The X-Files - Gillian Anderson

Scully - Gone but not forgotten

The X-Files have finally closed after an amazing nine years of investigating the strangest of events.

Now Gillian Anderson is no longer Scully, and she can't quite believe it…

Nine years ago, Gillian Anderson was a young unknown who stumbled into stardom when she won the role of Dana Scully on The X-Files. And now it’s over, and she’s not quite sure how she feels about that. “Don’t get me started. I don’t know why, but I woke up feeling so emotional today. It’s so surreal. I swear to God, it’s only starting to hit me over the past couple of days. And it just feels like nine years was so short. You know what I mean? While we were in the middle of it I felt that it would never end, and now it’s just all of a sudden… it just feels unfathomable. And that’s all I have to say.”

It sounds as if she might be having second thoughts about Chris Carter’s decision, but ultimately she realizes this is the moment to call it a day. “No, no, no. I think ultimately that it’s good to finish now. There’s a time for everything to end, and I think this is the right time. I think it’s good for everybody and I think that everybody has put in such a huge effort over the years in really trying to keep the quality of the show up and to continue with its integrity as much as it can. Now everybody in their own way is excited about moving on to other things. Both things can co-exist. One can be sad and in the process of mourning and at the same time be excited and hopeful for the future and change.”

Certainly she’s happy that she won’t have to see what the series would be like without her. “I don’t think I would have known that until the very end, when I would have thought, ‘Well, wait a minute. This isn’t right. This isn’t right.’ I’m very glad that the show is completely ending now because I have a feeling that even though I would have mourned to a certain degree in saying goodbye, there would have been something left undone. The crew would have been continuing and even though I was saying goodbye, it would not have been as clean. I feel like we have an opportunity now to really tie it up in a whole and constructive, finishing and completing way.”

Asked what she’ll miss most about the show, Anderson comments, “Oh God, the whole thing, the whole thing of living and breathing it. I mean, there are certainly trees within that forest that I can individualize. I’ll miss [director] Kim Manners and Chris and David and the crew and just being on set.” And the craziness of the fans, which started to get to her a little during the media frenzy of the series’ peak, when she was consistently voted the sexiest woman on the planet? “I haven’t been feeling the craziness of it lately. I think we’re pretty well protected from the craziness. It all just feels like there’s another entire entity out there that’s breathing with the same heartbeat as us and they support us, but I don’t experience a lot of craziness. We don’t get a lot of visitors to the set. Once in a while we do and people burst into tears and stuff, but the crazy period of time was earlier on and I didn’t even realize it that that was crazy until it stopped being crazy. Then I thought, ‘Oh God, that was crazy.’

by Ray Rogers

Get the full feature and a look back at nine years of The X-Files in
Xposé Special #20

Photo © 20th Century Fox
Feature © Visual Imagination 2002. Not for reproduction

Taken from

Xposé Special #20
Special 2002
ships from Jul 4 2002
News-stand Price
UK £4.99 / US $9.99

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