Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 10, 1994 TAG: 9412070017
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LYNN ELBER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
But nothing, it turns out, is more perilous than trying to have it all. The 26-year-old actress, enjoying her first big break in the Fox TV series, has also squeezed marriage and motherhood into the past year.
Lucky thing her character, who vanished mysteriously last month, reappears in Friday's episode (9 p.m. on Channel 21/27) comatose and clinging to life. This woman REALLY needs a rest.
``I actually slept through some of it,'' Anderson says, recalling her return to filming a scant two weeks after giving birth to daughter Piper by Caesarean section last month.
Anderson missed just one episode of the drama, which co-stars David Duchovny as FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder. Before that, creative scripting and camera work disguised her pregnancy.
Fans of the cult hit know Scully's unhappy fate in the Sept. 21 episode: She was kidnapped by a man who offers her up to aliens, figuring he'd already earned his share of frequent flier miles on unfriendly spaceships.
Whether her disappearance is due to interplanetary invaders - and is part of the intricate government conspiracy ``The X-Files'' wallows in so delightfully - is up in the air.
That, for a few breathtaking moments, was also where Anderson's career was after she became pregnant. Her husband is Clyde Klotz, a German-born art director whom she met on the series set in Vancouver, British Columbia, and married last year.
``I was adamant from the beginning that I was not going to terminate the pregnancy,'' she said by telephone from Vancouver. ``But it did cause quite an uproar.''
The gall of a fledgling star to have a baby in the second season of an increasingly popular series apparently left network executives beetle-browed.
``They had to really go over the tracks and make a decision about how they would handle it - if they would handle it,'' Anderson recounted. ``They were thinking of recasting.''
Thankfully, series creator and executive producer Chris Carter stuck by Anderson, who brings to her role an intellect and spunky appeal that transcends TV's usual gold standard of vapid bimbo-ness.
For her part, the actress was intent on combining work and family.
``I'm incredibly fortunate to be involved in this series,'' she said. ``And we're establishing such a following right now that it would have been selfish of me on such a humongous level with the millions of people who are devoted to the show.''
``I think there is a way to work it out,'' Anderson said. ``I wouldn't be satisfied creatively if I had to quit. ... I don't think that I could have been a full mother to [Piper] were I not feeding that part of my life.''
Although filming routinely extends beyond 12 hours a day, the actress has the advantage of being able to afford a nanny to tend her daughter on the set.
Fan mail showed that viewers were, with one adamant exception, supportive.
``There was a 12-year-old girl who basically said `What the hell are you doing? Why are you having kids? You're too young to have kids,' '' a bemused Anderson said.
She suggests that the series may have benefited from her detour into parenthood. The writers, she says, found creative ways to cope with her pregnancy-induced limitations and brief absence.
Mulder and Scully watched their investigations into the so-called X-Files - unsolved cases involving unusual phenomenon - quashed by shadowy government figures, and their partnership dissolved.
Ratings haven't suffered. The series has substantially increased its audience over last year and is so popular that Fox is using ``X-Files'' reruns to bolster the network's disappointing Sunday night lineup.
Now, Anderson is eager to get out from behind desks (and file folders and large, stomach-hiding coats) and back into action. With a little help to ease the telltale signs of a sleep-deprived new parent and hard-working actress, that is.
``The director of photography will go and whisper to the makeup artist, and when they come and start applying makeup under my eyes I understand what he was whispering about,'' she says with a laugh.
by CNB