USA TODAY June 12, 1998
 

VANCOUVER -- It was a quiet moment on the set. Chris Carter, creator of the hit Fox TV show, "The X-Files", was hunched over intently, watching the scene before him play out. All around, busy crew members were focused on their jobs, while various members of the supporting cast crowded the edges of the sound stage. But they were not reading their scripts or snacking from the laden buffet table. All eyes were on the action taking place.

David Duchovny, the handsome Emmy-winning star of the series, is speaking. Dressed only in faded jeans, he is shown in the familiar set which is the onscreen apartment of his popular character, Fox Mulder. Playing Mulder with a desperate intensity, he directs his lines to Nicholas Lea, the actor who plays Alex Krycek, the renegade FBI agent turned Russian spy.

Duchovny's voice is low, but the words carry across the soundstage with harsh emotion. "You killed my father, Krycek--what makes you think I can ever forgive you?" Duchovny's voice breaks on the last word, and as Lea moves in closer, the other actor conveys an increasing tension, a mix of that rage and attraction which Duchovny in an interview characterized as the motivating emotions behind his ambivalent relationship with Krycek. "I've told you, Mulder...it was him or you..." Lea's voice softens. "And it was me--or--or anyone else--anyone, Mulder...they let me choose. How could I risk letting anyone else choose. What if they'd chosen you?" Lea reaches up and cups the other actor's cheek, and turns his face slowly toward his own. And then kisses him. It is a long, increasingly passionate kiss, and as the actors embrace in the complex choreography their roles require, there is a sense of sizzling attention in the watching crew. "Cut," Carter says abruptly, gesturing sharply with his hand in the air. The actors break apart, the heavy emotion of their roles shed. Both men grin widely as the crew breaks spontaneously into applause...