In the originalTwin Peaks, Kyle MacLachlan was Agent Cooper, one of the great heroes in TV history.
He’s Cooper’s disembodied spirit.
He’s Cooper’s evil doppelganger, driven by a ruthless desire to survive.
He’s Cooper’s evil doppelganger’s dim-witted, adulterous, everyman double (now deceased).
That’s just my theory.
MacLachlan himself is just having fun.
Did you watch the premiere when it aired?I didn’t.
I think that’s part of the process.
It resonates and it continues to resonate if you let it.
But when I read it, I went, “Oh, wow, okay.”
Because he’s got no choice!
He’s got me!
But that he has the trust that it would work meant a lot.
I still didn’t know if it would work until I saw it the other night.
I ran it by him.
So we tried a variety of contacts, from very dark to not so much and different styles.
And he said no, it’s working great.
It looks like there’s a darkness there, but you’re not completely sure.
Everything about him is dark.
My skin is mottled, my hair is greasy and kind of long.
This is kind of coiffed in an awkward way.
That was an important part of the look, as well.
We found all these elements separately and it worked.
It was a great process.
I don’t usually get to do that.
How about the wardrobe, the shirt and jacket?That was David.
We tried a few different ones before we found the one we really liked.
We went through some jewelry options that were all discarded and rightfully so.
Simple is always better.
It’s always about finding the character without cluttering the character.
In my mind, you want to put in just enough salt.
Knowing when to stop is really important.
Rhythmically, he should be different, different on so many levels.
This guy doesn’t have any of that.
He is there to be served.
How do you conceptualize a character like this in your head?
Do you think of him as a human being?
An idea?He’s a shark.
He, for me, was real, insofar as being a living thing.
But it was more about playing his force, his energy, his will.
Those were the things that I hung onto, as opposed to making him real.
He goes to places I haven’t been much as an actor.
Thank god it did.
Because I know I am going to be completely protected and cared for.
And that’s great for me as an actor I don’t have to self-monitor.
Your Coopers threw up a lot in that hour.
That must have been fun to do.It was vile.
Yeah, that was not the most comfortable sequence there.
I was sort of overwhelmed by the amount!
That’s all I can really say about that.
It was vile and it was a lot.
What was it made of?I know cream corn was part of it.
But after that, I’m not sure what they used.
You also got to play another version of Cooper, Dougie Jones.That was a fun little departure,.
He’s s screw-up, a lovable screw up.
It was very brief, just a day, maybe two days of filming.
What’s it like as an actor to navigate those scenes when you’re performing them?
What am I falling through?
What is the texture?
What could I possibly see?
How overwhelmed or underwhelmed am I by the experience?
That’s always a key concern for me.
That’s what I held onto.
What was it like to act with talking trees in the Red Room scenes?I had no idea.
It was an X on the curtain.
The first time I saw the trees was when I saw it on screen at the premiere.
Was there a description in the script?No.
it was just a voice.
I don’t think there was even any dialogue.
Yeah, that was odd.
Watch the cast discuss the show’s odd universe and the revival in the new
