Go West!

You know those starry-eyed kids who dream of becoming an actor or actress? West Duchovny was not one of them.

Never mind that as the daughter of Téa Leoni and David Duchovny she grew up hanging around television and movie sets — she was more focused on grabbing junk food from the craft services table than watching her parents work.

"I absolutely had no interest," she says. "Everybody would ask me if I was going to do it, and I just felt defiant in making the questions stop." Then she acted in a play in college to help a friend. "I had this horrible feeling, because I knew I was never going to be happy doing anything else."

Duchovny went on to graduate from Brown University with a degree in English. Now she's graduated to the big time with a key role in a provocative limited series.

Netflix's Painkiller chronicles several players present for the beginning of America's opioid crisis — including Duchovny's Purdue Pharma sales rep, Shannon Schaeffer. Over six episodes, this composite character evolves from a naïve, perpetually smiling Midwesterner who's marketing OxyContin in doctors' offices to a shrewd and suspicious heroine. (Uzo Aduba, Matthew Broderick and Taylor Kitsch also star.)

"She starts making money and gets pulled into this world, which is really seductive to someone who grew up in a trailer park," West says. "But she has a strong moral compass."

The actress was so determined to land the role that she cried between takes of her self-tape made for director Peter Berg (The Leftovers, Friday Night Lights). "I was so frustrated because I loved it so much, and I was psycho about getting it right and making it perfect," she says. "I knew it felt different than anything I'd auditioned for. I loved that she was a fighter and had perseverance."

Despite her lineage, Duchovny — who also costarred in the 2023 Hulu series Saint X — is primed to grind it out on her own. But as she anticipates her next project, she finds comfort in her parents' advice. "They stress the importance of fulfillment outside the business," she says. "You have to find things that make you happy and productive. I'm working on it!"

This article originally appeared in emmy magazine issue #9, 2023, under the same title.

The interviews for this story were completed before the start of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.