Mulder tries to prove Skinner's innocence but Skin Read all Skinner, depressed over the fact that his wife is divorcing him, has a one night stand with a stranger who's found murdered in the morning. Mulder tries to prove Skinner's innocence but Skinner refuses to cooperate for some reason. Director Jim Charleston. Top credits Director Jim Charleston. See more at IMDbPro. Photos Top cast Edit. William B. Davis Smoking Man as Smoking Man. George Gordon Neurosurgeon as Neurosurgeon uncredited.
Colin Lawrence Officer as Officer uncredited. Finn Michael Cop as Cop uncredited. Jim Charleston. Storyline Edit. With his marriage on the rocks and on the verge of getting a divorce, a depressed Assistant Director Skinner meets an attractive blond, Carina Sayles, in a hotel bar and they decide to get a room and spend the night together.
When he awakens in the morning however, Carina is laying beside him dead from a broken neck. Skinner went to bat for Mulder and Scully when no one else would, and for that, he earned their mostly undying loyalty. It's only mostly due to a few instances where Skinner was forced to play both sides a bit in order to avoid not getting his own goose cooked. While Skinner's no doubt a good, decent man at heart, that was shaped by some rather horrific experiences in his youth.
Before he could become the man he became, Skinner went through the hell of war. Fans rarely saw him outside of the office, and even more rarely outside of him directly working for the FBI. It wasn't until season 11's "Kitten" that Skinner even got his biggest focus within a single episode.
Skinner had volunteered to serve in the Marine Corps at years-old, believing it the right thing to do, but returned home a distraught shell of his former self.
Six weeks later following the reopening of the X-Files, Scully suffered a seizure and was taken to hospital, with Skinner heading there. He noticed blinking lights on her brain scan, and deduced it as a coded message which translates "Find him", which he believes is linked to Scully and Mulder's son William. Mulder disbelieved this claim, however Skinner pointed out Mulder has believed more ludicrous things in the past. Later on while getting into his car, ex-agent Monica Reyes who was hiding in the back seat put a gun to Skinner's head, however he got the gun off her and pointed it at her.
The Cigarette Smoking Man then climbed into the car, and offered Skinner a deal to survive his upcoming plans to wipe out the human race, in return for him helping to find Scully's son. Skinner became dismissive with the Smoking Man, not wanting any part of his deal, although the Smoking Man revealed he ensured Scully was one of those that would survive the outbreak.
After Monica left the car, the Smoking Man revealed the truth about William's father: the Smoking Man himself is the father, having used alien science many years ago to artificially impregnate Scully. After his shocking meeting with the Smoking Man, Skinner returned to the hospital after Scully had been attacked, and ends up in a brief fight with Mulder who accuses Skinner of covering up the truth, having deduced he had met the Smoking Man due to the scent of cigarettes coming off him.
Skinner advised Mulder to drop the matter, and proceeded to leave. Main article: Fox Mulder. Main article: Dana Scully. Skinner was questioned for being present at the time of Mulder's disappearance, and both he and Scully were initially distrustful of Doggett, viewing him more or less as Kersh's enforcer. Main article: Monica Reyes.
Skinner and Alex Krycek were professionally polite to each other, but there was an undercurrent of animosity between them. This was increased dramatically when Kersh was promoted to Deputy Director in , immediately after Mulder's abduction.
The Cigarette Smoking Man would be present in Skinner's office on several occasions during his meetings with Mulder and Scully. In , the Smoking Man offered Skinner a deal to survive his planned depopulation of humanity, on the condition that Skinner helps him find Scully's son William. Skinner and Krycek were in conflict since Krycek had been exposed as a double agent. Krycek was involved in trying to kill Skinner and once assaulted him in a stairway.
Mulder once caught Krycek and brought him to Skinner's apartment for safekeeping, whereupon Skinner punched Krycek across the face and handcuffed him to his balcony railing. When Krycek obtained a nanovirus , he infected Skinner with it, only furthering Skinner's intense hatred of him — S.
In , Skinner shot Krycek dead. At first, the fact that he was asked back to audition for the role of Skinner slightly puzzled him, until he discovered the reason he had not previously been cast in those earlier roles — Chris Carter had been unable to envision Pileggi as those characters, due to the fact that the actor had been shaving his head.
Called in to audition for Walter Skinner, Pileggi attended the audition while in a grumpy mood — due to not having been cast for the series, previously — and had allowed his small amount of hair to grow back. Carter assumed that the actor was only pretending to be grumpy, a characteristic that had been sought after for Skinner. After successfully winning the role, Pileggi thought he had been lucky that he had not been cast in one of the earlier roles, as he believed he would have appeared in only a single episode and would have missed the opportunity to play the recurring role of Walter Skinner.
Pileggi unintentionally based much of Skinner on his own father, who had died shortly after the premiere of The X-Files. According to the actor, his father — an operations manager for a Defense Department contractor — had been a loving family man, having had a profound influence on Mitch, while also having been very tough, very stern but very fair with his employees. Pileggi was unaware of the resemblance between his father and Skinner but was later made aware of the similarity by his mother — who was touched that she could essentially watch his father on television — as well as the actor's siblings.
Pileggi also brought considerable life experience to the role, as much of his upbringing had been abroad since he had begun traveling at the age of seven and had worked for Defense Department-related companies throughout the Middle East before returning to the United States where he had embarked on his acting career at the age of twenty-seven. Walter Skinner first appeared in the episode " Tooms ", an episode written by regular writers and that would ultimately be the only episode of Season 1 in which the character would make an appearance although he is briefly mentioned in the season finale, " The Erlenmeyer Flask ", before serving as a regular character in subsequent seasons.
The script of "Tooms" establishes Skinner as having glasses. Despite being unaware that he was basing the character on his now-deceased father, Mitch Pileggi was conscious that, in Skinner's early appearances, the character essentially acts as an obstacle to Mulder and Scully before beginning, due to Skinner's nature, to understand the reality of what is happening to the pair of X-Files agents and becoming sympathetic to them.
Mitch Pileggi's portrayal of Skinner influenced the producers of The X-Files to start seeking more for the character to do. It was solely due to his strength as an actor. He came on and nobody knew that he would become such an important part of the show, but he was so good that we writers felt inspired to continue to bring him back and back and back, and he really has become a third lead in the TV series [ Pileggi himself described Skinner as being Mulder and Scully's "superior, they are directly responsible to, who gives them their assignments.
That's the way it's kinda supposed to work. It doesn't always work that way because they tend to go off and do what they're gonna do anyway, regardless of what his input is. I think he has very high moral standards. He's a very ethical person. However, Frank Spotnitz noted, " Skinner's always the man in the middle.
Very tough role. And the fun of that character was finding ways to compromise him, finding ways to force him to go to the dark side. On the other hand, writer thought one of the great things about Skinner was that "he's protective of his agents [ Concerning Skinner's development as a character, Chris Carter remarked, " It's interesting to look at the course of the character of Skinner [ He's got to be a neutral character who's got to believe Mulder and Scully but still do his job as their administrative superior, and to do that week in and week out, sort of play this same role and make it interesting was a testament, I think, to his strength as an actor, but also to the mythology and how it laid out and made it something interesting for him to play each week.
There was always a story to play, it wasn't just a part, it wasn't just a function. He was drawn into his own story, ultimately a much bigger story as the series progressed.
He became essential to the telling of these X-Files mythology episodes. During production of the series, Chris Carter's repeated and much-publicized denials that Mulder and Scully would become romantically involved also included jokingly nixing the idea of Scully and Skinner having a romantic relationship or, for that matter, Mulder and Skinner.
By two days before the third season episode " D. Following the broadcast of " One Breath ", in which Skinner recalls serving as a Marine during the Vietnam War , Pileggi received several fan letters from Vietnam veterans. Frank Spotnitz believed that the episode " End Game " was the first time when Skinner "really stepped out on behalf of Mulder and Scully.
During the production of "End Game", Pileggi took several memorable, accidental shots to the groin in slamming actor Steven Williams against and nearly through the fake elevator wall, while both actors were filming the scene in which their respective characters Skinner and X fight in an elevator. Skinner's role in this scene developed both from the writers' necessity of deciding a way in which Scully could discover where Mulder was — as only X knew this information — and Chris Carter finally asking Frank Spotnitz, "Can't we just have Skinner beat the information out of X?
By , the question of whether Skinner or his opponent, in the fight scene from "End Game", actually won their conflict had become a favorite question for fans to ponder at conventions. Following his tussle with X in "End Game", Skinner telling Scully that he learned of Mulder's location through "unofficial channels" i. Even though it was obvious to Spotnitz that the term meant "people he can go to, outside of his normal chain of command," Carter thought the phrase was somewhat silly so he added Skinner saying the line later in the episode, to refer back to X.
Regarding "Paper Clip", Pileggi was especially fond of the line of dialogue in which Skinner tells the Cigarette Smoking Man to "pucker up and kiss my ass. As noted by Frank Spotnitz, the writers had Skinner absent for most of the early part of the third season, after "Paper Clip", but he is then suddenly in practically every episode.
According to director Kim Manners , the scene near the end of " Apocrypha " in which Skinner visits Mulder's basement X-Files office was reshot by Manners. Skinner, in the originally filmed version of this scene, was rather friendly with Mulder but, upon viewing the scene, Chris Carter thought the characters were too buddy-buddy and that Skinner's relationship with Mulder should — at all times — be on a business level.
Upon being asked by Manners to confirm whether this happened, Carter was unable to remember if it had, but commented that it sounded like something he would be concerned about. Mitch Pileggi was not particularly thrilled about Skinner being beat up by "this little woman", a "scrawny little researcher" both descriptions referring to the character of Holly in the episode " Pusher ", especially not after Skinner had been brutalized so often beforehand.
The actor was admittedly becoming uncomfortable with the many beatings that his character had been receiving, at that point in the series, and thought that his reaction was also true of the series' fans. A similar observation, regarding the frequency of beatings taken by Skinner, was made by writer , who wryly noted that — if the frequency and variations in usages of character appearances from episode-to-episode worked out better — the writers would not have had Skinner taking an ass-kicking in practically three consecutive episodes.
The suggestion of showcasing Skinner in an episode an idea that would be the inspiration for " Avatar " was made by David Duchovny, who conceived the idea in the hope that such an episode would give him less scenes and might consequently allow him a break from filming; the final version of the episode actually made frequent use of Duchovny's character of Mulder, however, much to his dismay.
Ultimately, the actor nevertheless thought that Mitch Pileggi and also, therefore, his character of Skinner had deserved a nice episode after two years and was pleased with Pileggi's performance as Skinner in the episode. Duchovny and The X-Files ' publicist intruded on what was intended to be a closed set to watch the filming of the scene from "Avatar" in which Skinner has sex with Carina Sayles ; Duchovny also gave a little critiquing of this scene.
The scene itself entailed Pileggi and guest actress Amanda Tapping simulating sex for four or five hours while simultaneously surrounded by crew members trying to light, frame and photograph the shot.
Mitch Pileggi thought the episode helped to reestablish some of the ground rules regarding Skinner's position in relation to the X-Files unit and how far the character would go in fulfilling the unit's mission, noting that Skinner — in the course of the episode — does not accept a helping hand from Mulder, even though the latter character offers it, and that Chris Carter did not want to just put Skinner totally into bed with the pair of agents assigned to the X-Files.
Skinner's inclusion in " Talitha Cumi " was originally suggested by Frank Spotnitz, who mentioned — while boarding the episode with Chris Carter — that he thought the character seemed like he fitted, at some point, into the story. By Wednesday 20 March , the boarding of this episode was almost complete and included a scene in which Skinner was accosted by an angry Mulder, plotted out in two new index cards: "Mulder goes to Skinner — Where's CSM?!
Who is he?! Pileggi enjoys a light moment between setups, during production of the fourth season episode " Terma ". Writer and executive producer Howard Gordon found it easy to write a substantial role for Mitch Pileggi in the episode " Unrequited " whose main antagonist is a disgruntled veteran , due to the fact that Skinner had been established as a Vietnam veteran himself in the second season episode "One Breath".
During the filming of one particular scene from " Memento Mori " in which Skinner is asked by Mulder to set up a meeting between Mulder and the Cigarette Smoking Man , the usual friendly conflict or friction between Skinner and Mulder influenced director to decide to stage David Duchovny at first in an informally seated position on a couch in Skinner's office, seated lower than Skinner; this staging allowed Duchovny to then rise from the couch, when Mulder is making his case to Skinner, moments later in this scene.
Bowman was especially enthused about one of Skinner's lines of dialogue from this scene — "You can't ask the truth of a man who trades in lies. Writer Vince Gilligan was extremely pleased with Mitch Pileggi's performance in the single scene of the Gilligan-penned " Small Potatoes " that features Skinner, but wished the character had been in more of the episode.
Skinner's major role in the episode " Zero Sum " was a result of the absence of Scully actress Gillian Anderson for a week, during the production of The X-Files ' fourth season, and a conscious decision by the writers not to give too much work to David Duchovny while his co-star was having time off. Howard Gordon, by now considered to be the on-staff specialist on Skinner, was brought onto the episode, as co-writer with Frank Spotnitz. The writers wanted to avoid taking the liberty of having Skinner experience something paranormal, as that had already happened in "Avatar" and Frank Spotnitz felt that there was no reason for that to happen to an individual twice in their lifetime.
Spotnitz, having previously co-written " Memento Mori ", was aware of Skinner having already made his Faustian bargain with the Cigarette-Smoking Man in that episode and felt that "Zero Sum" was a logical time in the series to see that deal be played out. Howard Gordon believed that both he and Spotnitz were basically trying to preserve Skinner's integrity as a character while having Skinner make his deal with the devil but to also allow the audience to better understand the character and Skinner's relationship with Mulder and Scully, by taking Skinner into a morally gray area.
Gordon wondered to what degree Skinner was willing to sacrifice himself and his integrity to the pair of X-Files agents, and was curious as to where Skinner drew the line. Actor Mitch Pileggi, typically offered absolutely no explanation for his character's on-screen behavior, was unsure of the answers to the questions that Howard Gordon posed. Regarding the actor's sizable role as Skinner in the episode, director Kim Manners once commented that the script was "really something he could sink his teeth into.
Pileggi was given only a few days' notice that he, as Skinner, would be wearing only underwear — dressed in jockey shorts, rather than boxers — in one scene of "Zero Sum". The last-minute notification allowed Pileggi just enough time to do some exercise in a weight room and whip his physique into shape, in preparation for Skinner's scantily clad appearance.
The Making of The X-Files Movie Mitch Pileggi thought there were elements of Skinner's personality and character, in what the actor had been doing in the movie, that had been developing over the past couple of seasons and that the actor believed would just continue to build and grow. Chris Carter was wary that the scene in which Skinner appears with the Lone Gunmen could potentially bring the movie to a dead halt, with not only confusion for the audience about who the Lone Gunmen were and what was going on but possibly also the ruination of the audience's suspension of disbelief — due to the cartoonish quality of the Lone Gunmen characters — but Carter ultimately felt that he and his team had found a way to do the scene and to use it as a transitional piece in the film's plot.
In the gag reel from this movie, Mitch Pileggi — dressed as Skinner, with a phone to his ear and in the surroundings of this scene — can be seen ad-libbing lines, saying certain things that make no sense for Skinner to be saying. Right now, I'm gonna go over there and sit down. I'm real tired and I want to go to Disneyland," and, taking a seat, he sighs the word, "Yeah. I don't know exactly what he's doing but, uh Got a director talking to me, I don't know what the hell he's saying. The change of Skinner's professional connection to Mulder and Scully, in the first half of The X-Files ' sixth season, made the character of Skinner look increasingly expendable.
Due to Mulder and Scully's disciplinary transfer off the X-Files and their punitive reassignment to the purview of AD Kersh, Mitch Pileggi realized the obvious reality that Skinner would be absent for a while. The actor had earlier been told by Frank Spotnitz that the writers would include Skinner less during this period and, despite both Spotnitz and Chris Carter having always made it a given that the character would definitely not be leaving the series, Pileggi had some practical doubts, given the reality of the business he was in.
The role of the Nazi Skinner in " Triangle " allowed Pileggi some additional work and there were some notable similarities between that character and the usual version of Skinner, whom Pileggi typically played and additionally portrayed in "Triangle". Indeed, Chris Carter, who wrote and directed the episode, was conscious of having the actions of the story's two different versions of Skinner behave similarly; the Nazi Skinner first seems like he is conspiring with the villains before the viewer sees that the same is true of the more modern AD Skinner, who ultimately helps Scully search for Mulder betraying the true villains before the Nazi Skinner helps both Mulder and the s Scully escape again betraying the actual villains.
Regarding the Nazi Skinner's costume, Chris Carter was of the impression — during production of the episode — that Skinner was less recognizable with a hat on and thought of the character's spectacles as "little, sort of, Colonel Klink glasses. The role of the German-speaking Nazi Skinner also allowed Mitch Pileggi to utilize his ability to speak the language; the actor, who had learned German during a two-year tenure at college in Munich during the s , was the only member of The X-Files ' regular cast in "Triangle" who was fluent with the language.
The End and the Beginning: The Official Guide to The X-Files, volume 5 At one point, Pileggi asked Chris Carter why he was saying a line of German dialogue that did not make any sense in the context of the scene and Carter — baffled by the line himself after hearing it translated by Pileggi — replied by advising him to make up something that did make sense and to say whatever he would say if he was actually in the situation, so Pileggi was able to write some of his own German dialogue for the Nazi Skinner character.
By writing the episode " S. Shiban's solution was to give Krycek continuing control of the nanotechnology in Skinner's bloodstream; the newly heightened danger in Skinner's relationship with Krycek gave Skinner an agenda that Mulder was unaware of, thereby returning some mystery to the Skinner character and some conflict to his relationship with Mulder.
Skinner's role in "S. Although Mulder was originally planned to be the poison victim in John Shiban's original pitch for the episode , the victim was changed to Skinner after either Chris Carter or Frank Spotnitz commenting that the audience would know the writers would never kill Mulder suggested this alteration; the fact that secondary characters had been killed before in the series lent credence to the possibility that Skinner might also be killed off.
A potentially time-consuming and costly scene in which Skinner fought with Krycek was cut from "S. Another fight scene in the episode — involving Skinner battling a young, well-toned opponent in a boxing ring — was unusually easy to stage, as Mitch Pileggi had boxed competitively in college and was, before filming of the episode began, already a certified fitness fanatic in addition, the actor's father had fought professionally during his young adulthood.
Prior to appearing in the boxing ring as Skinner, Pileggi attended a refresher course at the well-known Goosen Gym in Los Angeles and, before taking the small dive which Skinner takes upon being knocked unconsciousness by his opponent, the actor did some actual boxing with the person playing Skinner's rival, which both performers enjoyed. Pileggi found it difficult to endure the prosthetics that were involved in creating the illusion of Skinner's illness.
The End and the Beginning: The Official Guide to The X-Files, volume 5 , The Complete X-Files: Behind the Series, the Myths and the Movies To appear as Skinner in this condition, Pileggi was required to awaken in the middle of the night, drive to the studio and sit motionless, long past sunrise, while wide-awake makeup artists glued black veins to his face, arms and torso.
The End and the Beginning: The Official Guide to The X-Files, volume 5 After a couple of episodes of dealing with that, Pileggi politely asked the writers if they could resolve the story thread concerning the nanotechnology affecting Skinner, even though the actor was of the opinion that the prosthetics looked good.
The Complete X-Files: Behind the Series, the Myths and the Movies The only positive aspect that Pileggi took from the experience of being made-up to look like such an unwell Skinner was that the process was so exhausting for him that he found it easy to play the character in Skinner's dead and dying states; Pileggi was so exhausted that, for one shot in which the camera pulls back from Skinner's open eye, the actor had a hard time even keeping one eye open.
To create the outer effect of Skinner's malady, special effects makeup supervisor John Vulich built the ravaged features of the seriously ill character from a latex mask of Pileggi's face, shot through with hollow rubber veins, many of them hooked up to hand-operated air bulbs to make them pulse and quiver on command.
The actor was covered with much more rubber than was obvious, on-screen, and the only section of his face that was left exposed included his nose and upper lip. To show Skinner progressing from extreme ill health to near death, Vulich constructed two entirely different sets of makeup. The nanobots in Skinner's blood, as shown in close-up in the episode, were designed by visual effects producer Bill Millar ; several tries at designing this technology were required one of the attempts — according to Millar — seeming too much like the CBS eye , but examples of the final design were then inserted into actual microscopic footage of blood and plasma and were "cloned" with a computer animation program.
David Duchovny's writing of the episode " Hollywood A. Skinner's prominent role in " Brand X " came about because an episode was once again required to be plotted around the absence of the series' lead actors; David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were both in active postproduction on their own respective episode of the seventh season — Duchovny had recently written and directed "Hollywood A.
As such, Gilligan was especially proud of both the small hand-off in which Skinner's chair is empty when Mulder walks into Skinner's office when the camera is facing the back of the chair but is being occupied by Jenn , by the time that the camera does a full turn around the set to face the front of the chair, as well as the hand-off in which the office is empty when Mulder enters it before a later shot slightly cranes up to show Skinner and many FBI agents sitting around a table in the background.
The plot for " Requiem " — the last episode of the seventh season and potentially, even after the season had wrapped, the final episode of the series — was revealed to the series' fans as well as to many of The X-Files ' cast and crew members in a highly secretive manner. In particular, the last two pages of the episode's script — which would ultimately involve Skinner learning of Scully's pregnancy — were missing during much of the episode's production period and were written by Chris Carter only on the day before the filming of the scene which Carter had deliberately scheduled as the last sequence, of both the episode and its season, to be shot.
Mitch Pileggi later acknowledged that he was unsure of what he had been feeling while this final scene had not yet been revealed and that he had been "kind of numb" at the time. Many rumors concerning "Requiem" circulated - among the series fans' and production personnel alike - due to the secrecy surrounding the episode and, since David Duchovny would most likely not return to The X-Files for an eighth season , there were hints that a recurring cast member might take Mulder's place; Skinner was quite often mentioned as a possible replacement.
Upon Mitch Pileggi hearing of this rumor, however, he laughed it off, dismissing it as "probably the most ridiculous rumor" of the many he had heard, up to that point. According to Frank Spotnitz, Seasons 8 and 9 were very liberating for the character of Skinner, as because Mulder was gone for the majority of both seasons it was generally much easier to give Skinner the kind of opportunities that the writers had always been eagerly looking to give him — specifically, to get Skinner out from behind his desk, out of his office and into the field, more involved with the action of the stories.
When you have a two-lead series, which The X-Files was, by necessity you're giving the lion's share of the interesting, dramatic conflicts to those two leads. And when Mulder left at the end of Season 7, we suddenly were able to play the ensemble in a way that we never really could before. And interestingly, David was always urging us to use the ensemble more when he was on the show full-time, but it wasn't easy to do.
We felt, as writers, you wanted Mulder and Scully to be doing those actions. And so I think in Seasons 8 and 9, Skinner really got to step out behind the desk a lot more and have a lot more active things to do in The X-Files mythology. The scene of " Within " wherein Skinner tells Doggett — while being interviewed by him — that he himself witnessed Mulder being taken away aboard a UFO was filmed in the second part of Doggett actor Robert Patrick's first night of attending production on the series; this scene also represented the first time that Patrick got to work with Mitch Pileggi, although they would later have a lot of fun through the course of Season 8 in sequences where Skinner is alone with Doggett.
The fact that performers Mitch Pileggi and Krycek actor Nicholas Lea were extremely familiar with each other by the point of the Season 8 episode " DeadAlive " meant that, during the writing and production of the episode, the writers as well as the two performers themselves thoroughly enjoyed making Skinner's relationship with Krycek be combative. The scenes of " Alone " that feature Skinner were written into the episode by Frank Spotnitz who worked on the episode not only as its writer but also as a first-time director , due to the fact that he was eager for the opportunity to finally work with Mitch Pileggi and did not want to miss the chance to do so.
Spotnitz was ultimately sorry that he had not been able to give Mitch Pileggi more to do in the episode and was aware that Skinner's scenes in "Alone" were probably not very demanding for Pileggi as an actor. The scene of " Existence " in which Skinner, standing inside an elevator with Krycek, is struck by Billy Miles' arm, piercing through the elevator door, required a difficult stunt in which a solid steel arm missed Mitch Pileggi's head by only a few inches.
Director Kim Manners speculates, " If Mitch would have leaned to his left two inches, he could have been killed. The scene that immediately follows this shows an unconscious Skinner in bed, recovering from the injury that Billy Miles caused while wearing a bandage over the wound. Mitch Pileggi was extremely ridiculed, by the production personnel, due to this bandage that according to Kim Manners was essentially a "feminine napkin.
Skinner's extreme desire to kill Krycek influenced Mitch Pileggi to react with elation, when the writers came to the actor with news that his character would be the one who would kill Krycek, in "Existence".
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