TV: Agent Scully ups her caseload

By LOUISA CLEAVE

Gillian Anderson has a new man in her life — and it's not David Duchovny.

The woman who made UFOs sexy through her portrayal of sultry FBI agent Dana Scully in X-Files is entering her eighth year on the cult series.

She is about to return to our screens in the seventh series but fans of the show should savour the simmering on-screen partnership of Scully and Fox Mulder.

Co-star David Duchovny is slowly bowing out of X-Files to be replaced by Robert Patrick, the evil cop in Terminator 2.

Despite never expecting X-Files to run this long, Anderson has signed on for another year of paranormal poo-pooing which will take her through to the end of 2001.

Anderson had said she could not forge on without Duchovny by her side but a large pay cheque seems to have been the deciding factor.

She will take home between $485,000 and $727,000 an episode this year.

Fair compensation, according to the actress, after years trailing Duchovny in the pay stakes.

"Based on what was being offered for the few episodes that he was doing [for his last series], we were back in the caveman ages. It was ludicrous," Anderson told showbiz magazine Entertainment Weekly.

Duchovny's salary plus a settlement of a lawsuit based on loss of syndication profits will see him pocket $72 million for 11 episodes in his final year.

Duchovny says it will be a long time before he is no longer identified as paranormal believer Fox Mulder.

"People are going to see me as him no matter what I do because of the physical resemblance."

But he says don't be fooled into thinking he is anything like his television persona.

"What viewers get from the show is the show, they don't get me. The same with films. My real fear is not typecasting. I fear people will get to know me."

X-fans who scour the internet for latest plot-lines, gossip and news will know that the upcoming series on TV2 is another big one for the mismatched detectives.

Put it this way. Scully's "mothership" status at the end of the series will have viewers wondering what happened when the lights went out in Fox's apartment, where viewers will see her waking up twice this season.

And will his disappearance at the end of the series turn out to be an alien abduction or a way of getting out of child support payments?

Those questions may or may not be answered this year in the United States (it's the X-Files, after all).

Discussing the transition from Duchovny to new sidekick Robert Patrick recently, Anderson said: "David's and my chemistry has been a topic of conversation for a long period of time, and it's valid and tangible, and so is the chemistry between Robert and me, thank God. I hope that people can open their minds enough to allow a natural progression to take place."

The X-Files spectacularly launched Anderson from unknown actress to Emmy Award-winning star.

Anderson and Duchovny made an X-Files movie spin-off, Fight the Future, and she has notched up a handful of movies in off-seasons.

Her latest is The House of Mirth, where she plays a woman at the turn of the century 100 years ago trying to marry a wealthy man for money rather than love.

Anderson has opted for roles as unlike Scully as possible, including an animated movie, Princess Mononoke, where she voiced the part of wolf god Moro.

"I like to be shaken," she says of her diverse movie roles. "Especially after doing the X-Files for so long, it's like I'm a racehorse at the gate. I'm dying to get loose and do as much as I can and be as challenged in as many ways as I can."

However, the 31-year-old mother of one says Scully is a very different character to the sidekick agent introduced in the first series.

"In the beginning, she was very much Mulder's sidekick, in a sense. She kind of followed him in the background. And I was actually instructed at the beginning — not many people know this — to walk a few paces behind David," she told Sci-Fi TV earlier this year.

Anderson said she was too green and powerless to argue.

"I didn't know what the hell was going on. Things have changed considerably."

They sure have.

Anderson is now very much on a par with Duchovny — not only in terms of salary but in popularity among fans, especially young women.

Among the many websites dedicated to her is the "Order of the Blessed St Scully the Enigmatic."

Anderson has used her fame to speak in support of and raise money for research into neurofibromatosis, a disease where tumours grow on the nerve tissue and something which her brother suffers from.

She is also a spokesperson for the Feminist Majority Foundation, an organisation which advocates political, economic and social equality for women.

"I'm not much of a public person, and I have mixed feelings about the celebrity aspect of the business I'm in," she says of her charity work. "The only true benefit is when one can be of service."

Watching brief:

The star: Gillian Anderson

The show: The X-Files

The time and place: Starts November 3, TV2, 9:30 pm.