David Duchovny is back on our screens for Malice and is looking super-fit at 65, but the X-Files and Californication star tells M&F that he wasn’t always a fan of lifting weights.
For Prime Video’s new psychological thriller, Duchovny plays a rich dad who hastily appoints a mysterious nanny, played by Jack Whitehall. And—as the six gripping episodes unfold, it soon becomes clear that the nanny has bad intentions for the very family that he’s been entrusted to support. The show, partially filmed in Greece, required Duchovny to appear shirtless but at 65 years young, this professional actor’s consistent effort to stay in shape meant that he was never nervous. Still, a love of lifting weights didn’t arrive until his 40s.
David Duchovny Had to Shun Prejudices to Lift Weights
Before he became the man who many people still know and love as Fox Mulder on the 1990’s smash-hit series The X-Files, Duchovny was a standout basketball player at Princeton University. “I was always playing a game,” Duchovny reflects on his youth, but as he matured, life began to get in the way of the sporting life, just like it does for so many of us. “In my 40s, my kids were starting to get older, they were going to school, and I was working a lot, so I didn’t really have time to play those games,” he explains. “And so, it became, ‘well how do I keep my body fit in the time that I’m allotted now?’”
With a starring role in Californication, the beloved actor spent a great deal of time semi-naked and understandably wanted to be in shape for the screen. To that end, Duchovny set up a gym in his garage but initially had a conflicted view of lifting weights. “I had never been a gym guy,” he tells M&F. “I always, like, looked down on those guys. Like, ‘Those are fake muscles,’ and ‘I only like the muscles that actually can play the game.’ That kind of s**t. And, even when I was playing basketball especially, they would tell you not to lift weights. It was back in the day when they were like, ‘No, you don’t want to get muscle-bound.’ So, I had these kinds of prejudices in my mind against the ‘gym workout,’ but I grew to love it.”
Duchovny Stays Consistent to Always Be Screen Ready
These days, Duchovny has a collection of resistance machines in his garage and is able to blend muscle building movements with functional exercises like pullups, medicine ball work, the bench press, and even a Pilates style reformer. Duchovny works out six times per week and now has a completely different attitude toward pumping iron. “But I grew to love it,” he shares. “I really love the kind of pain and the challenge. And as I get older and older too, it’s necessary. With Californication it was like, ‘Ah, s**t, I’m gonna have my shirt off a lot, it’s part of the job, I should probably get in good shape, but now it’s a health benefit for me at this point.”
Duchovny has long been a details man when it comes to his nutrition as well, opting to eat very little meat and reaching for a more pescatarian-based diet. He’s also mindful about where food is sourced from and often fasts between his evening meal and the next day’s lunch, aside from a protein loaded coffee. Fortunately, this lifestyle, and the love of gym workouts that Duchovny developed via Californication are paying dividends now. In Malice, the star once again goes sans shirt. So, how much notice did he get for that? “I think I must have been able to tell from reading the script,” explains the actor, who dances half-naked in one glorious scene. “There was no dialing it in,” he shares of prepping his physique, thanks to his trusty ‘stay ready to be ready’ mentality, and the fact that he wanted the character to appear authentic. “But certainly, you know, I’m as vain as any other actor, so I wanna look okay,” he laughs.
David Duchovny Loves to Stay Active Between Scenes
Also in shape for his sinister role as the family nanny is Jack Whitehall, who shed his comedic persona and got buff for the Malice project. The two actors were able to play tennis between scenes in Greece, and Duchovny says that Whitehall has developed a serious love for Padel. The guys even did pushups on set to stay pumped.
For recovery, Duchovny tells M&F that he regularly takes a cold plunge. “It’s not good for pleasure,” he jokes. “But you know, even that, I would say is part and parcel of working out, because ‘No Pain, No Gain,’ is the cliché, but when you put yourself in painful situations, or you put yourself in stressful situations, I really see it now as a rehearsal for real stressful situations. An ice bath is not a real stressful situation in life, but it is stress. And I think that it’s important to make friends with stress and know that you can kind of sit through it.”
Fortunately, there are plenty of stressful situations to relish in Malice, which begins Friday, November 14 on Prime Video.
