by Dave Bradley.
Dean Haglund is in his new hometown of Sydney during the following phone interview, and he spoke at length about his role as Richard ‘Ringo’ Langly, one of ‘The Lone Gunmen’ in the cult TV show The X Files. So at length, indeed, that maybe he went too far and said too much about… well, if I told you that I’d have to kill you.
Dean, you’ve recently relocated to Sydney, right?
“That’s right. I was born and raised in Canada but I lived for 15 years in LA, and now I’m Newtown’s newest resident… Yes, it’s true that it’s a great place, but my better half got promoted in her job and so we all just pulled up stakes and came on over for a few years. There are plenty of opportunities here and with acting they fly you where you’re needed…”
And you’re needed here for Supanova…
“Yep, can’t wait… I’ve been doing conventions since about the end of The X Files and I’ve always really enjoyed them, and I kept on being invited back and I kept on thinking, ‘Oh, The X Files will soon lose its popularity and this one will be my last convention.’ But then suddenly there was this whole new bunch of kids who’ve watched it on DVD and Netflix, and so they keep on calling me up and having me come on over to conventions. It’s fantastic.”
So Ringo isn’t the Gunman with the leather jacket and glasses [Tom Braidwood as Frohike] or the one with the beard and the nice suit [Bruce Harwood as Byers]: he’s the one with the long hair and big specs who looks like Garth from Wayne’s World, right?
“That’s right. I no longer have the long hair as it was cut for a movie in 2002, I think, and the glasses were fake. Without the hair and glasses I now look more like Byers, I suppose.”
So when did Ringo and the Gunmen first appear to help out David Duchovny’s Fox Mulder?
“I think we first all appeared together in something like the 13th episode of the first season, where we all help Mulder get into a top-secret facility in exchange for some photographs which we needed for a conspiracy newspaper we were putting out called ‘The Lone Gunmen’.”
Many fans remember The X Files as being very dramatic and scary and it certainly could be, but it could also be very funny, and some of the Gunmen’s banter with Fox is hilarious…
“For sure, and that was the writers. They’d always be happy when the Gunmen were going to come on as they’d have the chance to loosen up and add some levity to what became really heavy and dramatic, with alien invasions and ‘Monsters Of The Week’. It was always great fun to do, especially when David would improvise a few lines and we’d all have a laugh.”
Were the Gunmen in the first X Files movie?
“Yes, we had a scene – or was it two? – in 1998 in Fight The Future, but in the second movie, I Want To Believe, we were in the first draft but then, I think, written out of the second. And that was fine as we were only going to appear in Scully’s dreamscape or something… And especially as, by that time, we had theoretically been killed off.”
The Lone Gunmen also had their own rather short-lived series, which these days is remembered mostly as its first episode seemed to ‘predict’ the events of September 11 2001…
“It was weird, for sure. I didn’t even put it together on the day until one of the writers called me and said, ‘Are you watching TV?’, and I said, ‘Yes, why?’, and they said, ‘Well that is the pilot episode of our show!’ And you look at it now and it is very chilling: the plane is flying toward the World Trade Center and at the last moment the Gunmen gain control of the plane and it flies over the top of the building at the very last second. That was directed by Rob Bowman of The X Files and written by Vince Gilligan, who went on to do Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, and he was really weirded out by the coincidence, but he said that he got the idea from a Tom Clancy novel. It was shot in March of the year 2000, yes.”
Okay, so Dean, you said before that the Gunmen were killed off but The X Files has been revived and is coming back [woo-hoo!!!], so can you give me a scoop and tell me if Ringo and the guys are going to be in it somewhere? Or have you signed some kind of confidentiality contract?
“That’s all to do with [series creator] Chris Carter. What can I tell you is the truth, what is the truth – and is the truth out there?… What can I say that doesn’t… um… well… we might be in it.”
Dean Haglund appears at Supanova Pop Culture Expo, Adelaide Showgrounds, from Fri 20 Nov until Sun 22 Nov.
For further details, head to supanova.com.au.
Bookings through moshtix. Click HERE to purchase your tickets.
