The Skinny On... David Duchovny

What’s your favourite place to visit? 
Now that I live in LA, I'd say New York is my favourite place to visit. But I grew up there. So it's kind of cheating, but I'll go with that. I have so many friends and memories there and you know, every street that I walk on, as changed as it is, has, you know, echoes for me. So it's not really like a touristy kind of thing for me. But I certainly love London as well. I'll certainly be happy to get to Edinburgh as that's where my mum was born and raised.

What’s your favourite food?
I feel like I'd have a different answer every day. But what's my favourite food today? I'm such not a foodie... I like my sticky rice sushi, but not for breakfast (it's 9am Pacific Time when we chat).

What’s your favourite colour?
Oh wow. I do like colour. I have been known to wear some colours that maybe I shouldn't be wearing. I'll say blue today – blue sky. Blue.

Who was your hero growing up?
Probably a guy named Mickey Mantle, who was a baseball player. He was a Yankee – that's the New York team. He was great, I loved baseball, I wanted to be as good as him, be him and all that stuff. So he was my first hero, my first kind of role model, I guess.

Whose work inspires you now?
That just really depends on the form, you know? I'm reading a biography of Lou Reed right now, so I'm going back and listening to his music, I'm finding it really inspiring. As an actor I always find Daniel Day-Lewis inspiring. As a writer, I find Philip Roth inspiring. As a lyricist, I find Tom Petty, Jeff Tweedy inspiring. If you ask me tomorrow, I'd maybe have a whole different list.

What three people would you invite to your dinner party, dead or alive, and what are you cooking?
I'm not cooking, because nobody's gonna come to that party, I'm gonna order in. I'll invite Jesus, and I'll let him choose the menu because I feel like that's fair. He'll probably go with some hummus, I would imagine, and you know, I could go a little Middle Eastern. Maybe Buddha, just to like, you know, balance it out a little bit. And then we do need a woman, so let's go with... Emily Dickinson, even though I'm not sure she's gonna be much of a conversationalist. When Jesus turns the water into wine, maybe she'll loosen up a little bit. And I wanna end up in a drunken brawl.

What’s your all-time favourite album?
It's a hard question, and again, it changes... I'll go back to what I remember as my first favourite album – The White Album by The Beatles. Remember that when you're young, you like hits, you know, you don't necessarily like the deep cuts. But The White Album kind of forced half-baked songs, half-executed songs, you know, it was just so eccentric to me as a kid to see an album where they have throwaways. I just thought wow, they're just kind of amusing themselves, which was weird, they weren't trying to amuse me.

I just remember feeling it was very, what's the word? Idiosyncratic. But it felt really personal to them because it wasn't just like, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and hit and hit and hit. It was, Why Don't We Do It In the Road, it was Piggies, you know? Just like ah, what? These are songs? Also, even just the cover art, you know, to have something blank, to not name the album. All that stuff that was kind of pushing against the phenomenon that they were the hitmaking machine that they were.

What’s the worst film you’ve ever seen?
I only ever walked out of one film, but I don't know if it's a bad film or not, I never went back to see it; I was young when I walked out. It was called Aloha, Bobby and Rose. I feel like it might be a good movie, I just might have been too young for it. And again, that means I paid my money to get in, and if I walked out, because the money was important back then, it would have to be really bad... so I walked out, and I'm not sure why. I should try to see it again.

Maybe one to download before you hit the road?
Yeah!

You can watch it on the flight! And a book-related question for you now – what book would you take to a desert island?
Probably American Pastoral, the Philip Roth novel, it's just a very American book that kind of manages to confront America from the 60s [and early 70s]. And that's really my coming-of-age time, you know, so to read a very small personal book that manages to touch upon the major movements in America of those years, it's very profound for me, I think.

Who’s the worst?
I hate Trump, I could say that, I feel pretty good about it.

When did you last cry?
I cry all the time, I'll cry with music, I'll cry just being with my kids; sometimes it's with sadness, sometimes joy. I find time passing to be a very cry-making thought; stubbing my toe can make me cry.

What are you most scared of?
I'm scared of the way that we relate now, in terms of social media, and even just doing Zooms like this, even though it's super convenient. So, yeah, it's great that we can do this, but I'm afraid that we're becoming a little less human. But again, you know, it's going to be the future so the humans of the future will figure out how to be human. But, for me, I feel like we've witnessed a transition into a more mechanical age.

And it's all happening so fast. You know, 100 years ago it was the advent of the car, really. That seems like a bicycle now. What's next? I just feel like, you know, the way we've communicated, not to denigrate your format of questions, but you know, it's tough to communicate, trying to answer specific questions about what do you love, what do you hate? We tend to devolve into a lack of nuance, because of that lack of discussion – it scares me. That all scares me.

Getting interviewed in some way or even just, you know, answering questions like what's my favourite or my worst? I do truly mean that it might change tomorrow. It doesn't make me a liar either, but we're not in a place that we can kind of embrace that slipperiness, you know, we all have to go on record saying this particular thing or that or else we're fucked. 

My answers are like milk. They're good for like two weeks, then you'd better get new ones.

The answer to this next question was maybe caused by off milk... When did you last vomit?
I'm not a vomiter... I can't remember. I tried to vomit when I ate a brownie that had maggots in it, maybe 30 years ago, and I tried to make myself vomit. I only realised like halfway through the brownie, so I had ingested some maggots, for sure.

Were the maggots in there on purpose. Or was it an old brownie?
I can't speak for the maggots. I don't know what their purpose was. It was, you know, flies will lay their eggs in batter if they get a chance, because it's rich. And certainly some fly laid the eggs in there and they got baked, they survived, and they got wrapped up and I ate it. But even then, I couldn't barf. I couldn't do it, you've kind of gotta give up to vomit. Maybe I'm too controlling.

Tell us a secret?
Never!

Which celebrity could you take in a fight?
Most of them. All the dead ones – every single one.

If you could be reincarnated as an animal, which animal would it be and why?
Gee, I don't know if I wanna go land or sea? A dolphin's life seems pretty good to me. I'm sure that's a fairly basic answer, but let's go with dolphin, a mammal yet still in the sea – the best of both worlds.

That is true. I saw a whole pod of dolphins recently off the west coast of Scotland; they always look like they're having a good time.
Their mouths are in a kind of permanent smile. I know that they're pretty violent, too, so don't let them fool you.

And before we wrap things up, I have a few questions about your upcoming European tour with your band – what are you most excited about?
Well, playing live is always great, and playing in Europe is fantastic just because, you know, we get there so infrequently. And meeting people that are into the music, it's always so gratifying. On top of that, I had a new album [Gestureland] out a couple of years ago, in the pandemic; we just haven't toured since. So yeah, we're just happy to get out there and play live music and play the songs from the latest album, which is already two years old.

Was the album recorded during the pandemic or was it recorded before?
I probably sang like half the temp vocals [before]. I remember clearly because we were all talking about this virus. It was March of 20, and I remember just being in the studio... we just all kind of said goodbye and then the next day it was no more. And then singing became the most dangerous thing you could do. You know, singing became an act of aggression – it's so interesting. My vocal teacher, you know, [before] you'd stand in front of his piano facing him and sing in his face. No more. I do my vocal lessons over the phone now. He's no longer in-person, so yeah, singing became the last thing you wanted anybody to do in front of you.

It was a really weird time wasn't it? I don't know if it was the same where you are, but when they started opening bars again in Scotland, they didn't even allow background music because it made people talk too loud, so exactly the same as what you're saying about singing. Are you feeling quite safe about hitting the road then? Are you gonna be masked up, or are you just going to be taking it as it comes?
I think I'll always travel masked, [even] just for common colds, I think it's smart. But also, I do meet a lot of people on the road and we do meet and greets, you know, so I'll take whatever precautions I can, but you can't really take that many, you can only do what you can do. There's gonna be – forget about COVID – there's things floating around and hopefully I'll stay healthy, because it's hard to sing when you're sick.

For people who haven’t seen you and your band perform live before, what is a David Duchovny concert like?
I think we play really well live and I like to have a good time. We're usually a classic mixture of uptempo and ballads, so there's different phases in the show – there's quieter phases, rockier phases. I had a kind of a revelation the first time I was singing live in front of anybody. I was waiting to go on, I was super nervous, just because I'm not a natural singer, really. And I just heard the crowd out there and they seemed like they were in a good mood, and I realised that they had come to have a good time, and they weren't really that concerned with me. So I try and get out of my own head and just realise that I'm like a conduit there to have a good time. Then if I see it on YouTube, I'm like, 'oh, that's just so lame'.

Will there be any surprises along the way?
We're trying to figure out a couple of covers to do. We don't know yet, and that's it really.

Thank you so much, see you soon in Edinburgh
Bring the magazine and I'll dust of my best worst rock star moves.

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David Duchovny plays Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, 6 Nov; Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow, 7 Nov