David Duchovny had to call out character inconsistencies in The X-Files

Speaking on his Fail Better podcast, David said: "It was a bit of a pet peeve of mine when I was doing X-Files - not so much the others that I've done - but, as with Bones, it's episodic, but every episode is pretty high drama. It can be life and death.

"Sometimes the directors would come on and they'd know they had a great script and (since) this was on The X-Files, this could happen, you know? Like, 'Holy s***, this is a great script,' and the really wanted to kill it. Those guys were dangerous.

"So often they would say, 'We've never seen Mulder like this before', and I'd say, 'Yeah, like 10 other times we've seen Mulder like this before."

David recalled how he had to correct show bosses when Mulder revealed that he had a fear of fire in the season one episode Fire - as his alter ego had appeared unmoved by a blaze in the show's pilot.

He explained to guest Emily Deschanel: "I remember like in the middle of the episode, I had this thought. I think I went up to (director) Chris Carter - who wrote that episode I believe - and I said, 'Didn't Mulder and Scully watch a building burn down in the pilot? I think Mulder was fairly cool with it, you know, it didn't bother him.'

"It's like that kind of stuff, you know where you're going, you're kind of the curator of the character and sometimes you have to go, 'I can't actually do that.'"

David recently lamented how Netflix has changed the TV landscape as he doesn't believe that modern shows can have the longevity and reach of The X-Files, which aired from 1993 to 2002 before being revived from 2016 to 2018.

He told the Daily Telegraph newspaper last month: "Netflix kind of f***** the business in a way. Well, I mean, look at The X-Files, which had a foothold on the culture and then lasted. Now, there's just so much - things become incandescent for a year or two and then they just fade away."