Actor eager for return of ‘Peaks’
Kyle MacLachlan has done something millions of people worldwide would love to do but can’t: He has read the entire script of season three of “Twin Peaks.”
“I read the whole thing in one sitting,” said MacLachlan, who will return as FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper in the new 18-part series, premiering tonight on Showtime. “It took five or six hours, and I couldn’t stop. I poured myself a couple cups of coffee, and off I went.”
The script, he said, proved wonderfully surprising — surprises that continued on shooting days.
“I’d look at the call sheet and see that someone was coming in I hadn’t seen for a long time, or somebody new that I knew. It was the gift that kept on giving.”
Speaking by phone from his home in New York, MacLachlan, 57, sounded enthused but acknowledged one reservation.
“I’m sick of talking about the fact that there’s nothing I can talk about,” he said. “(Creator) David Lynch asked everyone not to speak, even in vague terms, about what was coming.”
The show reunites many actors from the original cast. Recognizable names include Madchen Amick, Sherilyn Fenn and Ray Wise. Also back: Sheryl Lee, who played Laura Palmer, whose murder kicked off the story.
When “Twin Peaks” (1990-91) launched on ABC, the network didn’t expect either the buzz or the loyalty the show would generate among fans.
“At the time ‘Twin Peaks’ was not like anything else,” MacLachlan said. “The pilot, in particular, had great power. It was full of the unexpected, and, when the unexpected happens on television, that’s even more powerful than in film.
“People saw these eccentric characters, with an eccentric character in the center, who was me,” he continued. “They either identified with them, or they had never seen people doing those kinds of things before, certainly not in a high-school READER SOLICITATION environment. The unexpected was around every corner and seemed to catch people’s fancies.”
The series quickly built a cult following, making MacLachlan a global star.
“I was recently in Morocco for a little holiday with my wife (producer Desiree Gruber), and I was recognized,” he said. “‘Look! The ‘Twin Peaks’ guy!’ I’m always kind of amazed.”
MacLachlan said he was happy to return to the land of coffee and cherry pie.
“I hoped that might happen someday,” he said, “but I had no control over it.
“Then David spoke to me and said that he and (co-creator Mark Frost) were going to write something.”
The return to “Twin Peaks” isn’t the first for the creators. A year after the series was canceled, they made the feature film “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” (1992), about a murder that took place before Laura Palmer’s death.
More recently, Lynch directed “Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces” (2014), a feature composed of deleted scenes from “Fire Walk With Me.”
The new series picks up 2½ decades after the original series ended. When last seen, Cooper was in the Black Lodge.
“I’m looking in a mirror, and I turn toward the camera,” MacLachlan recalled. “I’ve broken the mirror with my forehead. There was a transformation of some kind — absolutely.”
Before the actor entered Lynch’s world, he was a theater nut from Yakima, Washington — the eldest of three boys of a stockbroker/lawyer and a mother who was active in local arts. Partly because of her, he got involved in community theater and, later, high-school plays. At the University of Washington, he majored in fine arts.
“Acting was something that pursued me, not the other way around,” MacLachlan said. “I thought I had other interests, like sports, getting good grades and becoming involved with my fraternity in college. But acting kept coming around the next corner and confronting me. “Eventually, I gave in.” His life changed when he was spotted in a Seattle performance of “Tartuffe” and asked to audition for “Dune” (1984), a science-fiction film to be directed by Hollywood outsider Lynch. It was 1983, a year after MacLachlan’s college graduation.
“At that point, I was very green,” the actor said. “I had only done theater. David seemed like a regular guy from the Northwest; I’m from the Northwest. We talked a lot about common interests. Then he gave me the ‘Dune’ script, asked me to learn the big scenes and come back ... to audition.”
MacLachlan won the role of protagonist Paul Atreides and expected to appear in other “Dune” films — but the film flopped at the box office.
Lynch later cast MacLachlan in his unconventional, sexually charged thriller “Blue Velvet” (1986), alongside Laura Dern, Dennis Hopper and others.
During his Lynchian period, MacLachlan dated Dern for several years. He later had a long relationship with “Twin Peaks” co-star Lara Flynn Boyle. In 2002, he married Gruber, with whom he has a son, Callum, 9.
In time, MacLachlan said, he has come to value the effect that “Twin Peaks” had on his life — even though that wasn’t always the case.
“When I finished the show, I felt the need to step away,” he said. “I wanted to try something different.”
He appeared in “Showgirls” (1995) as the boyfriend of a stripper, in “The Trigger Effect” (1996) as a vigilante and in “Hamlet” (2000) as Claudius. When he returned to television, he showed up in mainstream series ranging from “Sex and the City” (2000-02) to “Agents of Shield” (2014-15). And he continues to play the mayor in “Portlandia.”
When the offer to return to “Twin Peaks” arrived, MacLachlan was ready.
“Over the years, I looked back on the role of Cooper with more and more fondness,” he said.
“I always liked him.”