David Duchovny Recalls “X-Files” Creator Suggesting He and Gillian Anderson Go to Couples Therapy After 'Butting Heads'

The costars reunited on Duchovny's 'Fail Better' podcast to talk about the tougher times during their hit show's initial run

David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are revisiting some of the rougher patches during their time on The X-Files.

The actors and long-time friends costared in Fox’s hit paranormal drama from 1993 to 2002, returning to their roles as FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in a pair of spin-off movies — 1998’s The X-Files and 2008’s The X-Files: I Want to Believe — and a two-season revival of the series in 2016 and 2018.

Duchovny told PEOPLE in June that as early as their audition process for The X-Files, he and Anderson felt “an immediate connection through the work that we could do, and that lasted for a long, long time.”

Related: David Duchovny Talks 'Failure of Friendship' with Gillian Anderson During The X-Files: 'Could've Handled Myself Better' (Exclusive)

But in the most recent episode of his Lemonada Media podcast Fail Better, the two costars share an intimate, candid conversation about the tougher times during The X-Files’ initial nine-season run, admitting that there were periods when they wouldn't speak off-camera for weeks.

“I have an image of, like, the most dysfunctional we ever were,” Duchovny, 64, told Anderson, 56. “It was some Emmys, and it was the day after, and I had a private plane, and I was giving you a ride.”

“You were late, and I was so angry, and then we sat on this private plane flying to Vancouver from L.A., not talking, and you wrote me a letter,” he recalled. “So, you're just, like, six feet away from me writing a letter to me that you give to me. And it's a beautiful letter.  I don't remember it exactly, but it was, like, it was appreciative, and it was, like, it was all the things that I wanted to hear.”

According to Duchovny, tensions between the two got so bad during the show’s first season that series creator Chris Carter suggested an unusual solution.

“I think we were kind of butting heads so early on in the first season that Chris asked us if we would go into fake couples therapy,” Duchovny said. “Would we go into, like, TV character couple therapy?”

“I remember sitting in his office with you,” the What Happens Later star told Anderson, who said she did not recall the conversation, “and Chris is like, ‘Yeah, do you guys wanna go, like, into therapy?’ And I was like, ‘You mean as Mulder and Scully? I’m confused…’ ”

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The pair went on to note the laundry list of factors that made for difficult times on The X-Files, including the show’s overnight success, long hours on set and, according to Duchovny, Anderson’s youth — she was just 25 when the series premiered in 1993 — plus her pregnancy during the first season.

“I do remember times where I just bawled my eyes out,” Anderson recalled.

“It's hard under those circumstances,” she continued. “It required us to be, you know, über adults very quickly. And I have to imagine that under those extreme circumstances that the only thing that at times is gonna wanna come out is actually our [inner] child and not our adult at all.”

Duchovny and Anderson’s full conversation can be heard on the latest episode of Fail Better podcast, out now on all major podcasting platforms.