Gillian Anderson has finally addressed her infamous Emmys kiss with her X-Files co-star David Duchovny . In 1997, as Anderson took home the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series at the Emmys for her role in the sci-fi series, she surprised fans when she turned to give Duchovny a celebratory kiss , rather than her then-boyfriend, Rodney Rowland. In a video shared online, Anderson finally cleared the air after fans spent two decades asking her about the backstory.
Anderson said she had been “told you guys want some information about when I kissed David first”. “The fact is that David and I were actually living together and Rodney was my beard,” Anderson said with straight face, before clarifying that she was joking. “That’s just a joke.
Was that really mean?” After getting the joke out of the way, the Sex Education star said the moment was more instinctive, likely because she and Duchovny were “practically married” while working on X-Files together. “I don’t know why I kissed him first,” she said. “I guess because he was on the show with me and we were practically married because we spent more time with each other than we did with our loved ones.
” She added: “And we were there to celebrate the series. So yeah, maybe that’s what it was.” The kiss has become a big moment in pop-culture history largely because of the will-they, won’t-they tension surrounding their characters: Anderson’s Dana Sully and Duchovny’s Fox Mulder.
The kiss too.