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“Aquarius” marks the actor’s first role on broadcast television since playing FBI Agent Fox Mulder on “The X-Files” — a role he’ll be reprising for a new season in 2016 — but he’s not straying far from cable. “Aquarius” is a hard-edged network drama, and Duchovny (as well as series creator John McNamara) said there’s more than what you’ll see on NBC. An “NC-17” cut has been created, even if it may not be available domestically.
Speaking to Indiewire at the end of April — the day news broke about the revolutionary distribution plan for “Aquarius” — Duchovny reflected on his past characters, from “The X-Files” to “Twin Peaks,” and how they all lead to Detective Hodiak. The former “Californication” star also discussed the transition from cable to broadcast, where his new show was intended to air, and why the ’60s are such a pivotal turning point for our country.
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I liked [“Aquarius”] because I felt like, as a country and even as a world, we always come back to the ’60s often, more than any other decade. We go back to other decades, but almost like deliberately for fashion or for music or whatever. The ’60s, we always come back for ideological [reasons], especially in America, and I thought Manson is really like the turning point of the ’60s. Manson was held up at the time as what’s going to happen if all you people keep doing drugs and fucking each other. You’re going to end up murdering senselessly, cutting babies out of pregnant women. Not the case really, but Manson killed the ’60s because he looked like a hippie but he wasn’t, and he came to represent the promise of the ’60s — the freedom, the love, the revolutions — [and] he was held up as, “This is where it’s going.”
So in a way, we were veering left in the ’60s as a nation on the political spectrum, and then we run into Manson and we veer right; we veer into Reagan almost immediately. Reagan, Bush. So in many ways the ’60s is like this pivotal point in our history and Manson is like a symbolic pivotal point in the ’60s. So I started to think about it that way, and I thought, “Well, that’s a very interesting show,” and like any period show it’s not just the period. You look at what’s happened now with policing, there’s a lot of black power stuff in our show, all the issues are still present. It’s not part of the past.
He wants to save his ex-girlfriend too, yeah. Yeah, he’s a knight. I saw Moody kind of in that way too, and obviously I’m in the minority, but that was certainly the character’s self-perception. He thought of himself as a gentleman and as somebody that really did love and respect women, and I would think Hodiak is the same. I mean obviously in a more traditional sense, but…
Watch the premiere episode above and all episodes of “Aquarius” right now at NBC.com.
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