Today's Entertainment

Page 2 May 25 - 31, 2015 David Duchovny finds mystery in the age of 'Aquarius' By Jay Bobbin © Zap2it Before he opens "The X-Files" again, David Duchovny will spend the summer tackling a reali- ty-based mystery. Returning to se- ries drama after his seven-season run on Showtime's seriocomic "Californication," the ac- tor also is an executive producer of NBC's late- 1960s-set "Aquarius," which has a two-hour premiere Thursday, May 28. He plays a World War II veteran and Los Angeles homicide detective struggling to cope with the rapidly changing times as he seeks an ex-girlfriend's missing daughter (Emma Dumont), helped by an undercover peer (Grey Damon, "Twisted") whose look fits the era's youth culture. Eventually, their paths cross that of some- one headed for infamy: Charles Manson (Geth- in Anthony, "Game of Thrones"). "What was interesting to me was less the actual period and more what the world was like when my character, Sam Ho - diak, grew up," Duchovny says. "Like my father, he would have been born in the '20s, and he came of age in the '30s and early '40s. That's a very differ - ent person from some- body who came of age in the '60s or, like me, in the '70s ... and to bring that guy into the '60s, with the hippies and the black power movement and all that, what did it look like to him?" Though "Aquarius" surely evokes a certain era, Duchovny likes the timeless quality of his new alter ego: "We looked at 'Point Blank' and some of the movies we liked from the '70s, and that was the kind of guy I was drawn to and talked about with John McNamara (the show's creator and another of its executive producers), to make him that kind of cool character." Expectedly, "Aquarius" is packed with references to its period, from Ho - diak's car to the tunes on the soundtrack, which in- clude Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" and the Monkees' "Daydream Be- liever." Duchovny notes, "You run out of your bud- get pretty quickly going for those songs, because (the rights are) so expen- sive, then it's really find- ing the hidden gems that manage to transport you to that time even if you don't know them. That's when the real digging oc - curs. We're not a cheap show, but the sky wasn't the limit." The vintage vehicles also had their limitations, since Duchovny reports the one he was assigned "had no air conditioning, and the brakes were not good. We were shooting in L.A. last summer and at one point, I said, 'OK. I guess my guy sweats.' I just made the decision that he sweats a lot, be - cause there was nothing else to be done. The weird thing is that all the cars that exist from that time are really nice now, and not everybody had a 'cherry' vehicle." Just before he filmed his widely acclaimed "Selma" performance as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., David Oyelowo tackled another giant challenge. The British actor holds the screen alone for nearly 90 minutes in "Nightingale," a drama that – like "Selma" – counts Brad Pitt among its executive producers. Shown at last year's Los Angeles Film Festival, the story of a war veteran's psychological descent gets its biggest exposure thus far when HBO presents it Friday, May 29. The script by debuting writer Frederick Mensch was found on The Black List, a website for unproduced screenplays. "People will start to think I'm a pretty intense dude," the pleasant Oyelowo muses of his recent work, "but I'm actually very silly in real life. Maybe this is where I get all my serious stuff out, in the roles I take." "Nightingale's" clearly troubled Peter Snowden became one of those roles for Oyelowo almost immediately after his agent sent him the script. "I just couldn't quite believe what I was reading," he recalls, "the audacity of it, the bravery of it, the singular nature of it. I'd had the privilege of doing not necessarily one-man shows, but shows where I was the primary character, so I'd had that kind of experience on stage but never on film." That made it a key intrigue for Oyelowo, also an executive producer of "Nightingale," to team with director Elliott Lester and test holding "the audience's attention for that long, and to see if it actually would work cinematically. It was kind of a dare to myself to just jump in ... plus it was a complex, interesting and intricate character to play. At the end of the day, as an actor, that's what you're looking for. All of those elements made this a no-brainer for me, really." The Oscar-winning, Ava DuV ernay-directed "Selma" has been available on home video since the beginning of the month. " 'Nightingale' was the first time I had immersed myself in a character that way," Oyelowo reflects, "and I knew that to play someone of Dr. King's magnitude, I would have to go that route again. "I've always been one to look for roles that speak about the human spirit, and I have to tell you that playing those two back-to-back put a dent in my actorly energy, but I'm so glad for the opportunity. You could go through a prolonged and rich career and not get to play one character of that magnitude, let alone two – let alone back-to-back. That was a great period for me." BY JAY BOBBIN David Oyelowo goes solo on HBO David Duchovny stars in the mystery series "Aquarius," premiering Thursday on NBC.

• Cover