It’s a broiling hot July morning in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files, is patiently giving me an interview in the basement cafe at the Théâtre du Passage, the home of the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival. By rights, he shouldn’t be here at all. The Californian is midway through shooting a new six-part season of the show that originally ran from 1993 to 2002. He has left Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) back in Vancouver, where the team has recently finished the second episode, to come to Swi ... [Continua a leggere]

Cast as Special Agent Scully at 24, it is unsurprising that Gillian Anderson left for London at the end of the decade long X-Files series. In the 10 years that followed, Anderson shunned Hollywood and reinvented her career in the UK with low-key roles in film and television costume dramas such as Bleak House, The House of Mirth, The Crimson Petal and the White and Great Expectations. "Every time somebody asks me if I'm interested in doing an iconic literature character, it's really hard to ignore," Anderson explains. Establishing a roster of women as far from Scully as possible – Henrik ... [Continua a leggere]

He is a famous comedian, but there is nothing funny about Billy Connolly's latest role: he plays a tortured Catholic priest in The X-Files: I Want To Believe. "There are no laughs at all, which is brilliant," says Connolly gleefully. "Father Joe is very disturbed, very dark. Doing a drama like this is a joy; you get to use your body in a different way, you get to use your eyes. I love playing dark characters, the darker the better, the more disturbed he is, the happier I get." He fixes me with menacing eyes. "The most worrying thing is that the darker the character, the easier I find i ... [Continua a leggere]

When Chris Carter, the originator of the The X Files, first sat down with executives from 20th Century Fox to propose his idea for what was to become one of the greatest cult shows in modern television, Bill Clinton was a fresh face in the White House and promising to make the world a better place. But Carter told the suits from Fox that what he had in mind was not to put the smile back on the faces of Americans but rather to frighten them out of their wits. "There's nothing scary on network television any more. Let's do a scary show," he told them. And so began a process by which The X Files ... [Continua a leggere]