By Jeff Gordinier
The Californication звезда on sex addiction, Nietzsche and secondary infections.
Q: This spring you’re starring in a movie called The Joneses, in which Ты play the “father” of a cool but fake family that a corporation assembles to coax their neighbors into buying stuff. I suppose a lot of Знаменитости do the same thing.
A: Yeah, sure. I haven’t sold that much. But the culture that’s embracing Twilight and Paranormal Activity and District 9 and 2012—you could kind of say that The X-Files sold that.
Q: Ты helped release a media virus.
A: Exactly. And now it’s reinfected people. I guess it went dormant for a while.
Q: Ты passed through a period of genuine Поп-культура frenzy during those peak X-Files years—sort of like what Robert Pattinson is going through now with the Twilight phenomenon. I’m curious about how it feels to live in the aftermath of that.
A: When you’re in the middle of it, Ты think, “This is the way it’s always going to be.”
Q: Ты do?
A: Yeah. In a way. Ты just think the Далее one is going to be bigger, the Далее one is going to be bigger—this is what happens, Ты know? And then that doesn’t happen. It doesn’t really happen for anybody. Then Ты kind of think that maybe it’s your fault that it’s not happening. Ты struggle against it for a while, proclaim too loudly that Ты want to do something else. And eventually Ты just make peace with it. I think at one point my wife [Téa Leoni] just said, “One день you’re gonna realize that it was a huge show, and it was important for a lot of people, and Ты can be proud of it.” I was always proud of the work and of the show. But I was never quite proud of being associated with it exclusively.
Q: Being stuck with it as the primary part of your identity.
A: Yeah. Yeah. Not that I didn’t like the character. I guess as an actor and a writer and a director there were many things I wanted to do, and in my mind this was reducing me, and my ego was fighting against it. It was like, “No, fuck you, I’m еще than that, I’m smarter than Mulder”—whatever. Ridiculous formulations! But that all passes and then eventually what Ты get is just gratitude for having gone through it, and kind of relief that it’s not quite like that right now.
Q: Ты lived on the West Coast for a while, but about a год назад Ты and your family moved back to your hometown, New York City.
A: The Переместить back—it’s mystifying to me. I don’t think Téa and I really realized what a big deal it is to Переместить kids around, so it’s taken a год just to kind of let the dust settle. It’s very different being an adult in New York as opposed to being a kid или being a young single guy. There are certain things that I still Любовь about it, but a lot of what I used to Любовь is not what I want to do anymore.
Q: Like what?
A: Like hang out on the 21st улица, уличный playground all день and play баскетбол with a bunch of 10-year-olds. Although now I could really dominate.
Q: Why’d Ты make the move?
A: Growing up in Malibu is a certain kind of childhood, and we weren’t sure if that was the only childhood we wanted to expose the kids to.
Q: What were Ты wary of?
A: In Malibu? Sun damage. The car culture, driving them everywhere. And then, in a way, the image of women that Ты get when Ты grow up in Malibu—everybody’s in bathing Форс-мажоры and has belly rings. I wanted my daughter to see a woman who didn’t have a belly ring. And on the Upper East Side Ты don’t see too many of them. If Ты did, it would be pretty gross.
Q: They’re there, though.
A: They’re just hidden under the support hose.
Q: My Избранное episode of Californication is the one in which you’re attending a ужин party in Los Angeles, and this badass writer and recovering alcoholic named Richard shows up, and Ты goad him into drinking a glass of whiskey and he winds up guzzling a lot еще and totally going off the rails and stripping off his clothes and tucking his family jewels and jumping out a window.
A: That’s the first episode from this year, and I directed it. Thank you. That actor is my oldest friend from high school, Jason Beghe. Everybody knows now that if you’re Друзья with me, you’ll have to tuck your penis and Показать it on television. All my male Друзья know that I’m coming at some point to make them Показать their manginas.
Q: Remind me not to be Друзья with you.
A: Jason has been my friend since I was 14. Ты know his work—he’s the cop in Thelma & Louise that they put in the trunk, and he was in a George Romero movie called Monkey Shines.
Q: Your character, Hank Moody, rattles off a couple of good lines in that scene about how an addict can’t succeed in recovery until . . .
A: . . . yeah, he’s gotta hit bottom! Well, Hank has not been involved in any 12-step program yet. Maybe that’s in the offing for Season 4. I don’t know. We’ll see. Ты kind of don’t want to see Hank recover, in that way. And I don’t see him accepting that kind of a program. He’s such an individualist and an egotist.
Q: I’m fascinated by the idea of the hyperintelligent person who’s resistant to the tropes of recovery—especially the slogans.
A: Yeah. “Let go, let God.”
Q: Right. “Fake it till Ты make it,” etc.
A: Ты know what? I know exactly what you’re saying. It’s interesting to read David Foster Wallace on it. Because he was a guy who was supremely intelligent—a different order of intelligence, at least in his writing. And he went into a 12-step program thinking “This is all bullshit,” and he writes about it and says that he’s kind of amazed that it works. He actually embraces the simplicity of it. But I don’t know if we’re gonna go there.
Q: Go there in Californication?
A: In the show, yeah.
Q: I didn’t know if Ты meant with me.
A: I’ll take you.
Q: I just finished Чтение David Carr’s book The Night of the Gun—he’s the New York Times media columnist who fought his way back from addiction to cocaine and booze. He says that those 12-step slogans saved his life. It seems like brainwashing, but I guess ultimately you’ve got to accept that it works.
A: Yeah. “It works if Ты work it.” That’s another slogan.
Q: There’s a point in The Joneses where your character makes a тост “to secret lives.” Considering what Ты went through in 2008—announcing Ты were going into rehab for sex addiction—do Ты feel any anxiety about delivering a line like that?
A: No, no. . .
Q: Because that whole episode is barnacled onto your bio right now.
A: I hate to think of it that way. But it’s probably right. A barnacle. Maybe not forever—I would hope. No, I never have concerns like that. Probably because I never think of a character that I’m going to play as any reflection on who I am. It’s just words on a page that I’m going to try to make human.
Q: Is it a burden, though—that part of your story?
A: I mean, maybe it’s annoying, but it’ll pass. The gifts that I’ve been able to receive in my own personal life greatly outweigh any kind of annoyance или dissatisfaction. Nietzsche has this term—it’s Latin, but it might’ve been a Greek perspective. It’s amor fati. Любовь of fate. The way I understand it is, there is no other response to fate. Ты can’t change it. It happens. So, I mean, what’s a better response for your own personal happiness—to hate it или to Любовь it? What happens if Ты say, “I’m happy with everything as it played out, because I have to be”?
Q: That’s liberating.
A: It takes a while to get there. Because sometimes Ты want everything exactly the way Ты want it. I have pride. I don’t know if it’s arrogance, but I’d like to be seen as an artist. I don’t want to be reduced to a headline. And I think whenever sex is involved—whenever the word sex is involved—people kind of lose their consciousness immediately. It’s like the red flag to the bull. Whatever constructive или educational dialogue that might come out of it—I haven’t found yet that the waters are calm enough to actually have that conversation. I hope as a culture that we do it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, или lose your head over, either.
Q: In past interviews you’ve been surprisingly open about your marriage to Téa Leoni.
A: I don’t talk about really personal matters. But yeah, I always had the sense that it was a really strong and profound match for me. And I was always very sure of it, as I still am. It always seemed to me that this was something I could talk about because I really thought it was always going to be there. It’s 13 years now—it’ll be 13 years in May. Whatever happened in the past year—obviously it’s profoundly personal, but it’s kind of just strengthened us as two people with one another in ways that I never could’ve imagined. We’re really good.
Q: There’s that other Nietzsche quote . . ..
A: “We’re really good”?
Q: No. “Whatever doesn’t kill Ты makes Ты stronger.”
A: Yeah. People Любовь that. They say that all the time. I used to say, “Whatever doesn’t kill Ты leaves Ты susceptible to a secondary infection.”
The Californication звезда on sex addiction, Nietzsche and secondary infections.
Q: This spring you’re starring in a movie called The Joneses, in which Ты play the “father” of a cool but fake family that a corporation assembles to coax their neighbors into buying stuff. I suppose a lot of Знаменитости do the same thing.
A: Yeah, sure. I haven’t sold that much. But the culture that’s embracing Twilight and Paranormal Activity and District 9 and 2012—you could kind of say that The X-Files sold that.
Q: Ты helped release a media virus.
A: Exactly. And now it’s reinfected people. I guess it went dormant for a while.
Q: Ты passed through a period of genuine Поп-культура frenzy during those peak X-Files years—sort of like what Robert Pattinson is going through now with the Twilight phenomenon. I’m curious about how it feels to live in the aftermath of that.
A: When you’re in the middle of it, Ты think, “This is the way it’s always going to be.”
Q: Ты do?
A: Yeah. In a way. Ты just think the Далее one is going to be bigger, the Далее one is going to be bigger—this is what happens, Ты know? And then that doesn’t happen. It doesn’t really happen for anybody. Then Ты kind of think that maybe it’s your fault that it’s not happening. Ты struggle against it for a while, proclaim too loudly that Ты want to do something else. And eventually Ты just make peace with it. I think at one point my wife [Téa Leoni] just said, “One день you’re gonna realize that it was a huge show, and it was important for a lot of people, and Ты can be proud of it.” I was always proud of the work and of the show. But I was never quite proud of being associated with it exclusively.
Q: Being stuck with it as the primary part of your identity.
A: Yeah. Yeah. Not that I didn’t like the character. I guess as an actor and a writer and a director there were many things I wanted to do, and in my mind this was reducing me, and my ego was fighting against it. It was like, “No, fuck you, I’m еще than that, I’m smarter than Mulder”—whatever. Ridiculous formulations! But that all passes and then eventually what Ты get is just gratitude for having gone through it, and kind of relief that it’s not quite like that right now.
Q: Ты lived on the West Coast for a while, but about a год назад Ты and your family moved back to your hometown, New York City.
A: The Переместить back—it’s mystifying to me. I don’t think Téa and I really realized what a big deal it is to Переместить kids around, so it’s taken a год just to kind of let the dust settle. It’s very different being an adult in New York as opposed to being a kid или being a young single guy. There are certain things that I still Любовь about it, but a lot of what I used to Любовь is not what I want to do anymore.
Q: Like what?
A: Like hang out on the 21st улица, уличный playground all день and play баскетбол with a bunch of 10-year-olds. Although now I could really dominate.
Q: Why’d Ты make the move?
A: Growing up in Malibu is a certain kind of childhood, and we weren’t sure if that was the only childhood we wanted to expose the kids to.
Q: What were Ты wary of?
A: In Malibu? Sun damage. The car culture, driving them everywhere. And then, in a way, the image of women that Ты get when Ты grow up in Malibu—everybody’s in bathing Форс-мажоры and has belly rings. I wanted my daughter to see a woman who didn’t have a belly ring. And on the Upper East Side Ты don’t see too many of them. If Ты did, it would be pretty gross.
Q: They’re there, though.
A: They’re just hidden under the support hose.
Q: My Избранное episode of Californication is the one in which you’re attending a ужин party in Los Angeles, and this badass writer and recovering alcoholic named Richard shows up, and Ты goad him into drinking a glass of whiskey and he winds up guzzling a lot еще and totally going off the rails and stripping off his clothes and tucking his family jewels and jumping out a window.
A: That’s the first episode from this year, and I directed it. Thank you. That actor is my oldest friend from high school, Jason Beghe. Everybody knows now that if you’re Друзья with me, you’ll have to tuck your penis and Показать it on television. All my male Друзья know that I’m coming at some point to make them Показать their manginas.
Q: Remind me not to be Друзья with you.
A: Jason has been my friend since I was 14. Ты know his work—he’s the cop in Thelma & Louise that they put in the trunk, and he was in a George Romero movie called Monkey Shines.
Q: Your character, Hank Moody, rattles off a couple of good lines in that scene about how an addict can’t succeed in recovery until . . .
A: . . . yeah, he’s gotta hit bottom! Well, Hank has not been involved in any 12-step program yet. Maybe that’s in the offing for Season 4. I don’t know. We’ll see. Ты kind of don’t want to see Hank recover, in that way. And I don’t see him accepting that kind of a program. He’s such an individualist and an egotist.
Q: I’m fascinated by the idea of the hyperintelligent person who’s resistant to the tropes of recovery—especially the slogans.
A: Yeah. “Let go, let God.”
Q: Right. “Fake it till Ты make it,” etc.
A: Ты know what? I know exactly what you’re saying. It’s interesting to read David Foster Wallace on it. Because he was a guy who was supremely intelligent—a different order of intelligence, at least in his writing. And he went into a 12-step program thinking “This is all bullshit,” and he writes about it and says that he’s kind of amazed that it works. He actually embraces the simplicity of it. But I don’t know if we’re gonna go there.
Q: Go there in Californication?
A: In the show, yeah.
Q: I didn’t know if Ты meant with me.
A: I’ll take you.
Q: I just finished Чтение David Carr’s book The Night of the Gun—he’s the New York Times media columnist who fought his way back from addiction to cocaine and booze. He says that those 12-step slogans saved his life. It seems like brainwashing, but I guess ultimately you’ve got to accept that it works.
A: Yeah. “It works if Ты work it.” That’s another slogan.
Q: There’s a point in The Joneses where your character makes a тост “to secret lives.” Considering what Ты went through in 2008—announcing Ты were going into rehab for sex addiction—do Ты feel any anxiety about delivering a line like that?
A: No, no. . .
Q: Because that whole episode is barnacled onto your bio right now.
A: I hate to think of it that way. But it’s probably right. A barnacle. Maybe not forever—I would hope. No, I never have concerns like that. Probably because I never think of a character that I’m going to play as any reflection on who I am. It’s just words on a page that I’m going to try to make human.
Q: Is it a burden, though—that part of your story?
A: I mean, maybe it’s annoying, but it’ll pass. The gifts that I’ve been able to receive in my own personal life greatly outweigh any kind of annoyance или dissatisfaction. Nietzsche has this term—it’s Latin, but it might’ve been a Greek perspective. It’s amor fati. Любовь of fate. The way I understand it is, there is no other response to fate. Ты can’t change it. It happens. So, I mean, what’s a better response for your own personal happiness—to hate it или to Любовь it? What happens if Ты say, “I’m happy with everything as it played out, because I have to be”?
Q: That’s liberating.
A: It takes a while to get there. Because sometimes Ты want everything exactly the way Ты want it. I have pride. I don’t know if it’s arrogance, but I’d like to be seen as an artist. I don’t want to be reduced to a headline. And I think whenever sex is involved—whenever the word sex is involved—people kind of lose their consciousness immediately. It’s like the red flag to the bull. Whatever constructive или educational dialogue that might come out of it—I haven’t found yet that the waters are calm enough to actually have that conversation. I hope as a culture that we do it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, или lose your head over, either.
Q: In past interviews you’ve been surprisingly open about your marriage to Téa Leoni.
A: I don’t talk about really personal matters. But yeah, I always had the sense that it was a really strong and profound match for me. And I was always very sure of it, as I still am. It always seemed to me that this was something I could talk about because I really thought it was always going to be there. It’s 13 years now—it’ll be 13 years in May. Whatever happened in the past year—obviously it’s profoundly personal, but it’s kind of just strengthened us as two people with one another in ways that I never could’ve imagined. We’re really good.
Q: There’s that other Nietzsche quote . . ..
A: “We’re really good”?
Q: No. “Whatever doesn’t kill Ты makes Ты stronger.”
A: Yeah. People Любовь that. They say that all the time. I used to say, “Whatever doesn’t kill Ты leaves Ты susceptible to a secondary infection.”
![12/01/2011 - Craig Ferguson [UHQ]](http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/18400000/12-01-2011-Craig-Ferguson-UHQ-david-duchovny-18401840-500-333.jpg)
