KYLE’S BIG SECRET
Actor coy on ‘Twin Peaks’ plot
Kyle MacLachlan has done something millions of people around the world would love to do but can’t: he’s read the entire script of Season 3 of Twin Peaks. “I read the whole thing in one sitting,” said MacLachlan, who returns as FBI special agent Dale Cooper in the new 18-part series. “It took five or six hours, and I couldn’t stop. I poured myself a couple of cups of coffee and off I went.
“It was a wonderful surprise,” he reported, “and the surprises 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.”
The 57-year-old actor was speaking by telephone from the office in his New York home. He sounded enthused, though he admitted to one reservation.
“I’m sick of talking about the fact that there’s nothing I can talk about,” MacLachlan said. “[Creator] David Lynch asked everyone not to speak, even in vague terms, about what was coming.”
The show, which is scheduled to begin airing on May 21 on Showtime, brings back many actors from the original cast. Recognisable names include Madchen Amick, Sherilyn Fenn and Ray Wise. Also back is 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 it would create 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. We thought we knew TV, and with
Twin Peaks that wasn’t the case.
“People saw these eccentric characters, with an eccentric character in the centre that was me,” he added. “They either identified with them or they had never had seen people doing those kinds of things before, certainly not in a high-school environment. The unexpected was around every corner and seemed to catch people’s fancies.”
Twin Peaks quickly built a cult following, and MacLachlan became an international star.
“I was recently in Morocco for a little holiday with my wife
[producer Desiree Gruber], and I was recognised,” he said. “‘Look! The Twin Peaks guy!’ I’m always kind of amazed.”
MacLachlan was happy to return to the land of coffee and cherry pie.
“I hoped that might happen some day,” 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.
“One of the pleasant surprises was that I actually fit into the suit after 25 years,” the actor added, “but there’s more than just a little grey in my hair now.”
This is not the first time that the Twin Peaks creators have returned to the show. A year after the series was cancelled, 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 two-and-a-half 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 MacLachlan entered the world of David Lynch, he was a theatre nut from Yakima, Washington. He was the eldest of three boys of a stockbroker/lawyer and a mother who was active in the local arts scene. Partly because of her he got involved in community theatre and then high school plays. At the University of Washington he became a fine arts major.
“Acting was something that pursued me, not the other way around,” MacLachlan recalled. “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 a Hollywood outsider named David Lynch. It was 1983, only a year after MacLachlan’s college graduation.
“David and I met in a nondescript office at Universal Studios,” he recalled. “He was coming back from his daily lunch at Bob’s Big Boy. He was into their specials.
“At that point I was very green,” he continued. “I had only done theatre. 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 in a few days to audition.”
MacLachlan won the role of protagonist Paul Atreides, and envisioned appearing in a series of Dune films. However, Dune was a box office failure.
“For two years I was very depressed and angry and belligerent and resentful,” he said. “Now I realise that, if Dune had been a tremendous success, I would have been that character until I had grandchildren.”
Lynch hadn’t forgotten MacLachlan, however, and he cast him in his unconventional, sexually charged thriller Blue Velvet (1986), alongside Laura Dern, Dennis Hopper and Isabella Rossellini.
The film’s weirdness kicks off when MacLachlan’s character finds a severed human ear in a field — which wasn’t a surprise to the actor.
“I’d watched Eraserhead,” he said, referring to Lynch’s famously bizarre 1977 feature debut. “I thought it was unusual how David tells a story
and the images he uses. David’s movies are very personal. You feel them, whether you allow yourself to or not. Some people are repulsed by them, but I feel them. And of course I know him very well now.
“A lot is the unconscious speaking,” MacLachlan added. “David will speak in a very unfiltered way. It’s his creative vision, and it’s fun to be part of that.”
During his Lynchian period MacLachlan dated Dern for several years. Later he had a lengthy relationship with Twin Peaks co-star Lara Flynn Boyle. In 2002 he married Gruber, with whom he has a son, Callum, who’s about to turn nine.
Through the years, MacLachlan said, he has come to value the effect Twin Peaks had on his life. That wasn’t always the case, though.
“When I finished the show, I felt the need to step away,” he admitted. “I wanted to try something different.
That need took him to roles 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, it was in such mainstream, not-very-weird series as Sex and the
City (2000-02), Desperate Housewives (2007-12),
How I Met Your Mother (2010-14) and Agents of
Shield. (2014-15). He continues to play the mayor
in Portlandia.
When the offer to return to Twin Peaks arrived, however, MacLachlan was ready for another dose.
“Over the years I looked back on the role of Cooper with more and more fondness,” he said. “I always liked him.
“I think David trusts me or believes I can travel with the viewer through the worlds he creates,” he continued. “I became the conduit for the viewers, and that remained constant.” MacLachlan sounded nostalgic already. “In some ways the character of Cooper suits me the best,” he said. “I seem to understand him, what he’s all about. We share some of the same qualities — an enthusiasm about things, a dry sense of humour, silly humour sometimes.
“I’m thinking back to the time Cooper tweaked Michael Ontkean’s nose,” he added, referring to the actor who plays Sheriff Harry S Truman. “That spontaneous kind of silliness is in me too. Cooper tries not to judge people. I’m the same way — plus we share a love of coffee.”
Does he expect to play Cooper again? “David has said that everything is Twin Peaks, so in a way more could happen,” MacLachlan said.
“I don’t know what it would look like if it were to go forward. It’s interesting to think about.”