CBS Sunday Morning - April 17, 2005

[Note: The reporter interviews David, Téa, and Robin Williams separately. The interviews of Téa and Robin take place in what looks like a hotel room; David's interview is in various NYC locations.]

Charles Osgood: Mika Brzezinski's assignment? A Sunday profile of X-Files heartthrob David Duchovny, who's new movie the "House of D" stars the always colorful Robin Williams and Duchovny's wife Téa Leoni. Let's just say a good time was had by all.

Clip from "The Pilot": [Mulder: Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?]

MB Narration: He first broke into the big time on the small screen as Fox Mulder, the sexy alien-hunting FBI agent on the hit show, "The X-Files." He developed such a cult following that there's even a song about him.

["David Duchovny, why won't you love me, why won't you love me ..." -- the song plays over lots of pics of DD from magazines and magazine covers.]

[DD wearing a striped shirt and tan jacket, sitting in the courtyard of Grace Church School.]

DD: No, no, I know it.

MB: You know it?

DD: Of course I know it. I used to play it in the car and I memorized it, and I kind of sang along with it. And then I realized I'd better put my window up cause I don't want to be seen singing the David Duchovny song to myself.

[Behind the scenes clips of DD directing and movie clips from "House of D."]

MB Narration: David Duchovny has given up alien-hunting for now. These days he finds himself behind the camera as well as in front of it, directing, writing, and starring in his first feature film. It's called the "House of D," the story of young Tommy Warshaw's coming-of-age in New York City in the 70s as told by his older self played by David Duchovny. A coming of age and a coming home.

[MB and DD walking through Central Park (I think); he's wearing the same outfit he wore on Regis (I think).]

DD: New York was such an important part of the story and a character in the movie that I had to shoot in New York.

MB Naration: The House of D is the Women's House of Detention, an infamous women's prison in the heart of Greenwich Village. Razed in 1973, it's now a beautiful garden.

DD: It's odd when you think about it, a prison in the middle of the city. So the women used to hang out the bars and actually yell at people and so I always thought looking back what a dramatic situation to actually have a random meeting with a prisoner. And that's kind of the genesis of the whole movie.

MB Naration: For David Duchovny, the prison was the perfect metaphor for his film.

[Sitting in the courtyard of Grace Church School]

DD: For me that's why it was called House of D, because everybody is in their own house of detention.

MB Naration: Robin Williams plays Pappas, 13-year-old Tommy's best friend imprisoned by his own limited mental abilities.

RW: It's like a kid. It's like a kid because they're about similar in mental age. It's also because he's about to lose a friend.

DD: Robin actually wanted to do the teeth and change his ears a little bit. I didn't think he should do the teeth because I didn't want to pay for it. It was a low budget film.

MB: (laughs) Okay, you're honest.

DD: Yeah, and I said, you know, I don't want to do the teeth and he said, well, I want to do the teeth and I said well, okay do the teeth. And then I got the bill for the teeth and I was outraged cause it was way too much.

MB: There'd better be good teeth in this movie.

DD: Well I was wrong, you know. He was right.

MB Naration: For Robin Williams, half the fun was just being in New York, where, he says, Duchovny's "X-Files" fame still attracts a crowd.

RW: (in funny voice) You're David Ducockny. I love you, David Ducockny. This was the great thing about shooting in New York. Hello, David Ducockny. You're on the X-Files. You know that ... all that aliens. Where's Mulder?

MB: [Question to Téa] I take it he probably gets approached a lot ...

TL: He does.

MB Naration: Téa Leoni, David Duchovny's wife in real life, plays Tommy's mother, a woman who's barely holding it together after the death of her husband. It's not a part you might expect a funny and beautiful Hollywood star to want ... (clips from "House of D") ... but Téa Leoni say she wanted it and she went after it.

TL: Truth be told, I don't think he had that idea. I think he had his eyes on Meryl Streep and I knew this and at some point I had to just ask him. And that's demanding it, because truly what's he gonna do, say no? I'm sleeping with him, and if he wants to continue in that, you know, line he'll give me the part.

MB: So you did have an "in"?

TL: Yeah. This is the first role that I can say I slept with the director to get this part.

[DD making funny faces through a classroom window, MB laughs.]

MB Naration: For David Duchovny, despite some early mixed reviews, the film itself is a kind of homecoming. Like young Tommy Warshaw in the movie, Duchovny was a bright boy with a scholarship to a private New York City school. [Various school pictures shown.]

MB: [looking at DD class picture] Oh, my gosh, look at these girls.

DD: I know all their names.

MB: You do? Come on, you don't.

DD: Cathy Goreland, Susan Scafner, Melissa Feldman ...

MB: Are you making this up?

DD: Celeste Shoop ...

[Walking through Central Park again]

MB: What about parallels to your childhood?

DD: Well, I delivered meat ...

MB: You delivered meat?

DD: I delivered meat around the Village?

MB Naration: But his boyhood dreams had more to do with hoops than Hollywood. He played basketball in high school which helped him get a scholarship to Princeton. [Pics of DD high school basketball.]

[In the gym of Grace Church School (I think) shooting hoops.]

MB: Did you play basketball here? [DD's answer not audible because reporter whoops it up when he sinks a three-point shot.]

MB Naration: After that, he went on to graduate school in English at Yale.

[In the garden of Grace Church School]

DD: I have what's called an A.B.D., which is 'all but dissertation.' So I was in the Ph.D. program and I sat my orals and I had my thesis topic, but I never wrote it.

MB Naration: He did write and direct several episodes of the X-Files, including this one starring his wife Téa Leoni and friend Garry Shandling. [Clips from "Hollywood A.D."]

TL: There was quick scene where David and I meet ... where I meet Fox Mulder, and that was really, that was actually, that was one of the most titillating moments on film. I don't know why. You know, because I put all this stuff into it. I thought I'm gonna play Téa Leoni who has a crush on Fox Mulder, a Téa Leoni pre-David Duchovny so available to have a crush on Fox Mulder, meeting Fox Mulder, and finding him to be a most ...

MB: You didn't have to go far to tap into that?

TL: Not at all. (Various pics of DD & TL)

MB Naration: Their whirlwind six-week romance and secret wedding was big tabloid news in 1997 at the peak of the X-Files craze. The place they chose to get married -- Grace Church, his old grade school.

MB: Right in this courtyard?

DD: Maybe right where I'm sitting.

MB: Really.

DD: I think it was over there. It was like a commando thing. We just ... nobody knew about it. There was only five people -- you know, her parents, my brother, my sister, and my mother. And we just did it. [Shows wedding day pic of DD and TL with DD's mom.]

MB Naration: David Duchovny's mother is something of a legend at the Grace Church School where she taught for more than 25 years.

[DD and MB walking down corridor of the school.]

MB: Oh that's really nice.

DD: Yeah.

MB Naration: There's even a wing named after her -- the Meg Duchovny Learning Annex. They call it "Meg's Egg."

DD: My mother's a beloved teacher. I walk around this neighborhood which is my neighborhood, the neighborhood school, and, you know, people stop me which I'm used to, but in this neighborhood they stop me to talk about my mother instead of aliens.

MB Naration: His eight-year marriage to Téa Leoni is something of a legend too, in that it seems happy and stable and completely without scandal. They have two children.

TL: My daughter has him completely wrapped around her finger. [Paparazzi pic of DD and West]

MB: How did having kids change you or your career, or did it?

TL: Maybe the better question is how's having children not changed you? And then I could maybe come up with maybe one thing.

MB: Right. Okay, how has it not changed you?

TL: It hasn't changed my sex life.

MB: There you go!

DD: We still like each other.

MB: You still do?

DD: Yeah, we like to be alone. I love to be alone with her.

MB: That's what she said. Well, I'm not gonna get into that. You can ask her what she said to us.

DD: Well, it's more seemly when a woman talks about sex. Not when I do.

MB Naration: [Shows Redbook magazine cover] Can they be that cute? Of course, neither of them will admit to it.

MB: The two of you are a little too cute.

DD: Yeah, I know. But that's the style of that magazine. That's not us. We're not that cute.

TL: [Looking at Redbook cover] However, the body position and everything ... David and I hang out like that all the time.

MB: Really? (laughing)

TL: Yes, we have friends over, and they sit down, and I get on David like this and that's how we spend our evening.

MB Naration: And well, in the words of Robin Williams ...

RW: Perfect. I think we have to say that. Let's just use it. Par-fay!

[DD and MB playing one-on-one basketball.]

DD: You like to throw it right at my face. (laughter)

MB: I had two older brothers.

MB Naration: For now, it all seems to be working as this former alien-hunter heads into new territory, taking a shot at writing, acting, and directing all at the same time.

[DD does some fancy shooting and fancy dribbling, then dribbles away from the "defense," shoots and scores!]

MB: Oh, very good!

DD: That was a good shot!