{"id":8208,"date":"2017-10-04T11:10:16","date_gmt":"2017-10-04T15:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/twin-peaks-kyle-maclachlan\/"},"modified":"2017-10-05T18:25:48","modified_gmt":"2017-10-05T22:25:48","slug":"twin-peaks-kyle-maclachlan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/twin-peaks-kyle-maclachlan\/","title":{"rendered":"Kyle MacLachlan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Kyle MacLachlan had already appeared in the feature films Dune<\/em> and David Lynch\u2019s Blue Velvet<\/em> when he was cast as FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks<\/em>. However successful the films had been, it was the 1990 series\u2014Lynch\u2019s first television project\u2014about a murder in the eponymous town full of idiosyncratic residents that became a cult classic and catapulted MacLachlan to international fame. Three years ago, when Lynch announced he was working on a new iteration of Twin Peaks<\/em> with co-creator Mark Frost, MacLachlan was immediately on board. In Twin Peaks: The Return<\/em>, which premiered on Showtime earlier this year, MacLachlan reprises the role of Agent Cooper and also plays his evil doppelganger and a new character, Dougie.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> What impact did the first Twin Peaks<\/em> have on culture and your career?MACLACHLAN:<\/strong> It had a big impact for a number of reasons. Obviously, the power of network television in 1990 was huge, and Twin Peaks<\/em> was unlike anything that had been on the air up to that point. It was cinematographic. The music was new. The story itself\u2014murder mystery, small town\u2014was not so new, but the characters who inhabited that place were, again, unlike anything anyone had seen before. And the character I played\u2014the central character, the eccentric FBI agent\u2014was not like any FBI agent we\u2019d ever seen before, so there were all these new and exciting things, and the compelling \u201cwho killed Laura Palmer?\u201d mystery. The impact was immediate, in a way, but also there was a slight delay in the fact that we\u2019d filmed all seven episodes before anything went to air. And then it came out and we were all like, Oh wow, it\u2019s being well received, that\u2019s fantastic! I went on to do [the feature film] The <\/em>Doors<\/em>, and then they said, We want you to come back and do another season [of Twin Peaks<\/em>]. I said, Great, let\u2019s do it. We finished that, and I suddenly became more desirable in television.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Twin Peaks<\/em> also had a big impact on television. A lot of showrunners say they took their inspiration from Twin Peaks<\/em> and felt permission to do things that maybe they wouldn\u2019t have done before.
\nMACLACHLAN:<\/strong> Yes, I think that\u2019s very true. Again, pointing to the beginning of Twin Peaks <\/em>and what was different was the auteur, David Lynch, coming to the world of television. Up to that point, that was unheard of. Suddenly you have David Chase, Damon Lindelof and Steven Soderbergh bringing their genius, their creativity, to television largely because of David Lynch.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> How did this new Twin Peaks<\/em> come about? Had you been in contact with David over the years?
\nMACLACHLAN:<\/strong> Yes, David and I live very close to each other in Los Angeles. I\u2019d visit him and ask, Do you ever think about going back to Twin Peaks<\/em>? But I would couch it very casually. He would say, I don\u2019t really know. I think in his mind it was finished and he\u2019d put it to bed and that was it. I just accepted that. We moved on. I was just waiting to see if he was going write something that I would be right for. Then he called me one day, really out of the blue, and said, I want to talk to you about something, but I can\u2019t do it over the phone. So we met in person, and that\u2019s how he told me that he and Mark [Frost] had been working on preliminary ideas, and he asked if I would be interested. And I said, Absolutely, of course I would! It\u2019s the greatest character I\u2019ve ever played and the most memorable and complex and interesting, so I said yes without any real idea of what direction we were going in. That\u2019s how it started.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Was it difficult to reinhabit the character after so many years, or was it like riding a bike?
\nMACLACHLAN:<\/strong> Kind of both. I felt pretty comfortable in the suit, to be honest. But the character was going in different directions, so I was excited as an actor. It was Cooper, but there were other elements going on. It was very much a gift. No one has ever asked me to play a character like that before\u2014neither the dark character nor the light character. I knew I was capable of doing both, and I was excited because David was going to be my director. I knew I\u2019d have the kind of caretaking that\u2019s necessary when you do characters that are that extreme. You need someone there whom you absolutely trust to keep you going in the right direction.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Tell us about working with David Lynch.
\nMACLACHLAN:<\/strong> Directors of that level, of his quality, share a joy for the creative process. It\u2019s an absolute love of the performers, the actors, that creates an environment on set that is conducive to great work. For instance, Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n, whom I worked with on the pilot [for the series Believe<\/em>]\u2014created a very similar environment, and a collaborative relationship, that doesn\u2019t always exist with every director.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> David Lynch has said that this is an 18-hour project as opposed to 18 episodes. Was it also shot differently, unlike episodic television?
\nMACLACHLAN:<\/strong> Exactly. For David it was an 18-hour movie, so we filmed it as a movie. We were on location shooting all different elements but not in sequence at all. It\u2019s what you do in film. You do jump around in television as well, but in features, yes, you\u2019re all moving, so you rely so heavily on the script as your blueprint. You\u2019ve got to know what came before and what\u2019s going on after so you can modulate your [performance].<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> The television landscape has changed so much since the first Twin Peaks<\/em>. Was there any concern that the audience might not react the same way because they\u2019ve been exposed to so much now?
\nMACLACHLAN:<\/strong> It was never anything that I thought about, to be honest. When I read the script, I said to myself, Nothing like this has ever been seen on television. It\u2019s not for everyone because it\u2019s a very interesting journey, so you\u2019re either up for that or not, but I think we all knew going in that it was going to be something extraordinary, really worthwhile, pure Lynch. And to be honest, hats off to David Nevins [president and CEO of Showtime] for the gamble. He didn\u2019t have to agree\u2014although he did because it was the only way David Lynch was going to do it\u2014but he said, I\u2019m in, and that was it. And, wow, that\u2019s a big gamble.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Are there themes in this one that will particularly resonate with today\u2019s viewers?
\nMACLACHLAN:<\/strong> Some, yes, but they are themes that David is interested in: good versus evil, malice in the world. I sum up the series by saying, the world is out of balance, and we are attempting to bring it back into balance. Let\u2019s see if we make it. There are wonderful, surreal elements in this that I think are beautiful and challenging to the audience\u2014some very dark, some funny, some very violent. Everything is there to impact the audience in a certain way. It\u2019s not a linear story as much as it is a visceral story\u2014and that\u2019s obviously the strength of David Lynch\u2014and you\u2019re either into that or not.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Right. It grabbed me in a way that other shows don\u2019t.
\nMACLACHLAN:<\/strong> Yes, you can\u2019t watch this over your shoulder while you\u2019re making toast in the kitchen. You\u2019re sitting down, and you\u2019re all in.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> What are you most proud of about your performance in Twin Peaks
\n<\/em>MACLACHLAN:<\/strong> I think I made every effort to create different characters, and I didn\u2019t want a piece of one leaking into the other. I feel like I\u2019ve been pretty good at creating the characters that you see: Cooper, the doppelganger and Dougie. Each one is singular and of his own quality, and you don\u2019t see any of Dougie in Cooper or vice versa. Hopefully, there are two distinct characters that stand on their own without any overlap.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Did you ever have to play more than one character on the same day?MACLACHLAN:<\/strong> Yes, a few times. It wasn\u2019t too bad. I\u2019m a firm believer that what you put on the outside has a lot of influence on what\u2019s happening on the inside. It\u2019s the opposite view of [actor and director Konstantin] Stanislavski. But I feel like that was very helpful to me\u2014just looking at the face that we created and getting the physicality of him; it starts on the outside and moves to the inside and takes over, and then I\u2019m in that place.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> It\u2019s tough to binge on the show because it\u2019s a little creepy.
\nMACLACHLAN:<\/strong> Well, I said the same thing. I\u2019m really glad that this isn\u2019t something that is available all at one time, because two hours is a lot to absorb, and I don\u2019t think people realize what is happening inside with David. It\u2019s like you look at a piece of art and you\u2019re moved, but you have to process it, and I think when you [watch] one episode after the other you don\u2019t have a chance to process.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> What upcoming projects do you have?
\nMACLACHLAN:<\/strong> I\u2019m doing Portlandia<\/em>, that\u2019ll be fun. This might be the last season of Portlandia<\/em>. And then I\u2019m just reading material for right now. What has been happening, which is fantastic, is that the work I\u2019ve done on Twin Peaks<\/em> is work that gets work. It\u2019s causing people who thought they knew me to rethink what they know of me, so that\u2019s been a benefit to expanding my options, hopefully.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Are you equally at ease with drama and comedy?
\nMACLACHLAN:<\/strong> Yes, I like them both. The fun thing about Portlandia<\/em> is that it\u2019s challenging in a different way. While there are written lines in the scripts, they are just jumping-off points. So you end up improvising in and around what\u2019s there, and sometimes you go off on wild tangents. I find the process of improv thrilling and magical, but it\u2019s incredibly<\/em> tiring. In the end, my brain is like a marshmallow, so I\u2019m only there for two or three days. I don\u2019t know how Fred [Armisen] and Carrie [Brownstein] do it for as long as they do\u2014it requires a lot of mental power.<\/p>\n

And the thing about improv is that it doesn\u2019t have to be perfect. The fantastic thing about Portlandia<\/em>, for example, is that you have a director, Jon Krisel, who directs most of the episodes, although other directors have come in\u2014Carrie has directed as well\u2014so you just give everything you can, and they will take it and assemble it. The story is constructed, hopefully, of the best stuff that you\u2019ve been able to create\u2014not always, but hopefully!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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