‘X-Files’ Reboot Casts Emmy-Nominated Actor

An Emmy-nominated actor is joining The X-Files.

Deadline reports that Himesh Patel has been cast opposite Danielle Deadwyler in Ryan Coogler’s reboot.

Hulu ordered the pilot in February, with Patel and Deadwyler reportedly playing “new original characters” in the show, so they will not be new versions of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. In the new series, written and directed by Coogler, fresh off his Oscar win, Deadwyler and Patel will portray two highly decorated but vastly different FBI agents who “form an unlikely bond when they are assigned to a long-shuttered division devoted to cases involving unexplained phenomena.”

Jennifer Yale will serve as showrunner and also executive producer alongside The X-Files creator Chris Carter, and Coogler, Sev Ohanian, and Zinzi Coogler of Proximity Media. Simone Harris of Proximity is a co-executive producer.

Patel is best known for his role as Jack Malik in the 2019 rom-com Yesterday. He received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for his role as Jeevan Chaudhary in HBO Max’s Station Eleven. He can most recently be seen in an episode of Prime Video’s Bait and the 2025 film Bubble & Squeak.

Additional credits include The Franchise, The Assessment, Greedy People, Good Grief, Enola Holmes 2, The End Up, Impact Winter, Don’t Look Up, Tenet, The Luminaries, Avenue 5, and Damned. Upcoming, Patel will reprise his role as Dr. Watson in Netflix’s Enola Holmes 3 and will portray Eurylochus in the much-anticipated star-studded Christopher Nolan action-adventure epic The Odyssey this summer.

The X-Files initially ran for nine seasons on Fox, from 1993 to 2002, with two additional seasons from 2016 to 2018. The series also spawned two films: The X-Files: Fight the Future in 1998 and The X-Files: I Want to Believe in 2008. Carter revealed in 2023 that a reboot was in the works, with Coogler attached to the project. He’s been expressing his excitement for the reboot in recent months, including on the podcast Last Podcast on the Left.

“I’m fired up to get back to it. Some of those episodes, if we do our jobs right, will be really f—ing scary,” Coogler said in April 2025. “We’re gonna try to make something really great, bro, and really be something for the real X-Files fans, and maybe find some new ones.”