Gillian Anderson has sworn off returning to her career-making role on “The X-Files” in the past. However, she now says she’s open to the idea if it gives her the chance to work with Ryan Coogler since the “Black Panther” director is developing a reboot of the cult sci-fi series.
“I’m not saying no,” Anderson told “Today” host Savannah Guthrie on Wednesday. “Maybe I’ll pop in for a little something, something.”
She continued, “It’s so funny because for most of my life, since I have finished ‘The X-Files,’ every interview I do, people have asked and the answer has always been, ‘Nope, not going to happen, not going to happen.”
But now that Coogler — who the actress called “brilliant” and “a bit of a genius” — is on board, her interest has been piqued. “I cannot think of a better way around for a reboot to happen,” Anderson said. “Whether I am involved in it is a whole other thing … I think he’s really cool and I think if he did it, it would probably be done incredibly well.”
Chris Carter, creator of “The X-Files,” told TheWrap in February that he’s given Coogler his blessing for the reboot, but won’t be directly involved with it himself.
Bloomberg confirmed the news of the reboot in December, but Disney, who owns the franchise after purchasing Fox, has not publicly commented on the project so far.
The addictive sci-fi series, which costarred David Duchovny, originally ran on Fox from 1993 to 2002. Carter, Anderson and Duchovny all returned for two additional — if far shorter — seasons that aired in 2016 and 2018, as well as two feature films in 1998 and 2008.
Most recently in 2022, Anderson told Variety that returning to the role of Special Agent Dana Scully felt like “such an old idea.”
“I’ve done it, I did it for so many years … there would need to be a whole new set of writers and the baton would need to be handed on for it to feel like it was new and progressive,” she admitted. “So yeah, it’s very much in the past.”
