Diving back into the character beats of this episode, let’s talk about Scully’s incredibly emotional morgue confessional to William. Did Gillian have a lot of thoughts about how to play that?
Gillian was really into that whole idea that it was like an apology but speaking to someone who may, or may not be her son. She liked the idea of baring her soul to this person who she felt like she failed. We talked a lot about that, and we worked on the monologue together. The thing that she kept coming back to was that she was interested in the duality of not really knowing if this was her son, and being overtaken by the emotions of what it would have been like for her. I liked really exploring that and also for her character to explore the idea that when the body is missing, that became a moment of optimism for her. Of course, there’s Mulder who’s saying, “Well, there could be many reasons…” because there’s this conspiracy theory about why the body is missing. But I liked that idea that Gillian was really into Scully’s hope of what happened.
Exclusive: The X-Files’ writer/director James Wong gets into the Ghouli of it all
Just Holding Hands 