Gillian Anderson Cringes at Old Footage From The X-Files

Originally posted on Men's Journal | By Griff Griffin | Last updated 4/26/24

“This is probably the most cringey scene I’ve ever done,” admits Gillian Anderson during a rewatch of The X-Files.

The actress, who plays agent Scully in the hit ‘90s sci-fi drama, rewatched clips of her performance in a YouTube reaction video with Vanity Fair (shown below). It’s safe to say she wasn’t impressed.

“When I look at it, it just looks awful,” she says, laughing. In her defense, it was almost 30 years ago. Under the cringe, Anderson is still clearly proud of the role in which she made her name.

Vanity Fair

Elsewhere in the video, she details how the show came into being. “This is the first time that Scully and Mulder meet,” she says of the pilot episode. “It wasn’t the show that Fox thought was going to be their popular show. They had all their eggs and their money on a show called Briscoe County or something like that.”

The X-Files soon caught on, however, and regularly drew 42 million viewers per episode. So despite Anderson cringing, at least she did better than ‘Briscoe County’.

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