Best Of: Kyle MacLachlan / Inside the ‘romance scam’

Fresh Air

This episode of Fresh Air Weekend features an in-depth interview with actor Kyle MacLachlan about his new memoir, Fictional Selves, and his enduring

Key takeaways

• Kyle MacLachlan reveals he modeled his FBI Agent Dale Cooper voice heavily on David Lynch's own speaking patterns, noting the director's mentorship was always encouraging rather than judgmental.
• MacLachlan describes working with Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet, explaining how Hopper's terrifying on-screen intensity contrasted sharply with his soft-spoken, charming off-camera demeanor.

Main topics

• Kyle MacLachlan's memoir Fictional Selves
• David Lynch's creative process and mentorship

Notable quotes

"The worlds that [Lynch] creates are real in his mind — they exist."

Conclusion

The episode offers listeners a dual perspective on modern storytelling: one rooted in decades of artistic

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) This week on the NPR Politics Podcast, a vibe check on election security. With barely a month left until the midterms, we're talking about vote by mail, the possibility of ICE at polling stations, and what the Trump administration is doing in the name of preventing fraud, which we know is not a widespread problem. Plus, the latest on how voters are feeling about all of that. Listen now on the NPR Politics Podcast. Speaker 2 (0:26) From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend. Speaker 6 (0:31) Damn good coffee. And hot. Speaker 2 (0:34) That's today's guest Kyle MacLachlan in Twin Peaks, one of the most eccentric series on pre-cable TV. It was created by David Lynch, who also made the groundbreaking film Blue Velvet, starring MacLachlan. But their first movie together flopped. MacLachlan has a new memoir. Also, Andy Greenberg from Wired magazine describes the story he broke about a cybercrime operation in Southeast Asia that entraps computer engineers into participating in schemes that defraud victims around the world of billions of dollars. And I'll tell him about a cyber scam that fraudulently uses our show's identity. And book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Min Jin Lee's new novel. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. Speaker 3 (1:24) A free press is a critical protection for we the people. The NPR network proudly upholds your First Amendment rights with independent journalism that answers only to you. Your support keeps our reporters on the ground holding power to account and the power to decide what's next for public media is yours. Give at donate.npr.org. Speaker 8 (1:49) This election season, you can streamline your news intake with Up First. Our team of reporters and editors works overnight, so you can start every morning with three stories you need to know. In short episodes, 12-14 minutes long, to save you time and your sanity. Follow Up First on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 (2:10) Before Bernie Sanders or AOC, a man named Michael Harrington tried to market socialism to the American public. Speaker 3 (2:18) Tens of millions of Americans are poor, miserable, in body and in spirit. Speaker 1 (2:23) On NPR's ThruLine, how the founder of the DSA created a modern political movement. Listen to ThruLine in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This Speaker 2 (2:34) is Speaker 1 (2:34) Fresh Speaker 2 (2:34) Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. Speaker 3 (2:37) Diane, 11.30 a.m., February 24th. Entering the town of Twin Peaks. It's five miles south of the Canadian border, 12 miles west of the state line. I've never seen Speaker 6 (2:49) so many trees in my life. As W.C. Fields would say, I'd rather be here than Philadelphia. Speaker 2 (2:55) You may recognize that as my guest Kyle McLaughlin in the first episode of the David Lynch TV series Twin Peaks, as FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper recording a message as he drives. At the time, Twin Peaks was the strangest, most dreamlike series ever on TV. Like a lot of dreams, the meaning of the imagery and story were often elliptical, hard to interpret. To everyone's surprise, Twin Peaks became a big hit. McLaughlin says he wouldn't have become the person he is without David Lynch. Just months after acting school, McLaughlin seemed destined for a meteoric rise. Lynch was making an adaptation of Frank Herbert's 1965 science fiction novel, Dune, and he cast the young McLaughlin as the lead. Along with the part came a multi-picture deal with its producer, Dino De Laurentiis. After the movie flopped, the deal was canceled. McLaughlin had to rewrite his plans and wasn't sure how. His next break came when Lynch cast him in Blue Velvet, which was a turning point in American film for its nightmarish imagery and threatening performances. Lynch and McLaughlin teamed up again for the TV series Twin Peaks and the return of Twin Peaks and for the Twin Peaks movie Fire Walk With Me. While McLaughlin was writing his new memoir, Lynch died. The memoir is called Fictional Selves. The title is a reference to who people think he is based on his roles and who he really is and how confusing that can be for him. You may also know Kyle MacLachlan from his roles including Showgirls, Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, Portlandia, Overcompensating, and Fallout. Kyle MacLachlan, welcome to Fresh Air and congratulations on your memoir. Speaker 6 (4:45) I'm very grateful to be here, and thank you for having me on the show. Speaker 2 (4:48) So in the scene we just heard, David Lynch was in the backseat of the car directing you as you read that message you were recording. Is it reassuring to have your director in the backseat, or does it make you more self-conscious? Speaker 6 (5:04) It's both. First of all, and we'll get into David and our relationship, but having him near... always made me feel better. So that wasn't even part of it because there was never judgment. I never felt there was judgment coming from David. It was always just joy and pleasure. You know, in a strange way, I think the pressure was really sort of self-delivered by me. And it's like, I want to do a great job here and I want to get everything the way I imagine it to be. And David's help and input was always to expand. what I'd started and just more to think about, more colors, more ideas, more suggestions about how to really deepen and enrich the character, the scene, the moment, whatever it might call for. Speaker 2 (5:55) You wrote that you didn't use your real speaking voice for the role. What did you change? Speaker 6 (6:01) Well, it was heavily influenced by David because I recognized that Cooper shared so many of David's quirks, I guess, personality, attitudes. Straight-laced Speaker 2 (6:15) but weird? Speaker 6 (6:16) Yeah, yeah, yeah, just a little bit off, right? And I feel like I don't know it. Oftentimes, things come and I do them, and I'm like, I'm not exactly sure why I'm doing it this way, but I'm just going to trust it. But it was kind of a, you know, now listen, Sheriff, you know, and it had a little bit of an almost a nasal quality to it. And David's speaking voice, you know, not all the time, but he can be, you know, he'd be, Kale, hey, you know, you know, sorry, I'm thinking, blowing out the speakers here, but it had a certain pitch. And I just found myself kind of burrowing into that. Speaker 2 (6:57) David Lynch, who was your mentor, your director, and your good lifelong friend, died while you were writing the memoir. How did his death change what you wanted to say, change the mood of the rest of the book, change your mood while you were writing it? Speaker 6 (7:20) Well... Yeah, at first it was a significant loss. Speaker 6 (7:28) Obviously, when someone passes so suddenly like that, there's a shock, you know, and you just disbelieve. And the beautiful thing about a memoir is that you then can go back and say, and from that, I grew to this, or I learned this, or this changed in me. Obviously, I didn't know how he would feel. about some of the stories that I tell, some of the difficult times that we went through as friends and as creatives. He was such a private person, you know, that to share those intimacies and those moments. Speaker 6 (8:13) I felt like he would need to... be okay with that. You didn't want to feel like Speaker 2 (8:22) you were violating him. Speaker 6 (8:23) I didn't. Speaker 2 (8:25) Is there an example of one of those dark times that you refer to in your relationship with Lynch? Speaker 6 (8:32) Yeah, we, during the course of the making of Twin Peaks, the original Twin Peaks, there was a struggle. I felt I was definitely trying to... Speaker 6 (8:45) You know, it wasn't the sinking ship necessarily, but I felt like I was trying to keep something afloat that I didn't know how to keep afloat. I didn't have the skill set. I didn't have the knowledge. Speaker 2 (8:56) Well, David Lynch had left the series during the second season. And he was the sensibility behind the show. So with him gone, there were new writers. And you felt as like the person whose point of view we most often see. as someone who was very close to Lynch, that you should be an anchor and you should help keep the ship afloat. Speaker 6 (9:20) I did feel that responsibility. And it was difficult. And at the same time, I'm like, I can't blame anyone, honestly, knowing David as I did and his personality and his creative self. Running a show is not what David wants to do. Every day is going to be a different place, you know. So it was foolish of me to expect that he would... remain in place and basically be there every day and do the writing and answer the questions and all the things that a good showrunner has to do. So that wasn't the answer. So there was no answer. There was no what can we do to bring back that essence you talk about, that thing that made Twin Peaks so special, which is... really, David and Mark Frost, the co-creator, because it was sort of the combination of the two of them. But in terms of the direction and the unusual nature of Twin Peaks, the mood. That's pretty much David. Speaker 6 (10:28) It came back occasionally when he was directing, because he came back to direct a couple of episodes in that second season. And you could feel the cast, myself included, just open. It was like suddenly there was moisture in the air and everybody was like, oh my gosh, we can breathe. The creative energy had returned. And then it was taken away again. And you're like, oh. You can't help but yearn for that when it's not there. Speaker 2 (11:00) Lynch had a way of getting to the dark underside of things, the things that aren't necessarily visible, the people who you don't necessarily know who are kind of crazy. And the danger that you may be attracted to in some way, but if you're in the middle of it, it's really dangerous. It's like not fun. So I'm wondering, acting in so much of David Lynch's... work and being absorbed in his sensibility, did it bring out a dark side of you that you hadn't been in touch with so much before? Speaker 6 (11:41) You know, I think there was only one instance in the newest season, The Twin Peaks Return, that I played three different characters, actually a few others, but three main characters during the filming of that. And one of those characters was, as you described, very dark, psychopath. And that was really the only time I felt like, okay, I am now going to enter into a dark world. And that was a deliberate putting on of the character in the morning when I got to set. And that would happen as I was getting my makeup done and then I would put on the wardrobe. And as I put on everything, I began to, you know, breathe like that character. At the end of the day, I was like... I am now ready to let this guy go. And it was such a relief. I said, I do not want to carry any of this energy back to my home, back to my family. And I left and put him away in the closet, in the trailer, when I would get undressed and get back into my regular clothes. Speaker 2 (12:52) Did you feel like Lynch saw something dark in you that you'd been trying to keep? Speaker 6 (12:57) I think so. Speaker 2 (12:58) Your distance from? Speaker 6 (12:59) Yeah, I think so. I think, you know, when we did that, we'd known each other for 30 years, you know. So he had seen behavior from me. And I'm pretty good at hiding that. But he had seen it, you know, as a good friend would. And, you know, he creates these incredible worlds, incredible environments, and slightly separate realities. Speaker 6 (13:24) I recognized pretty early on, particularly in Blue Velvet, that I was tasked with the job of going into these worlds, maintaining an innocence which got singed, let's say, in Blue Velvet until I came back out again. But ultimately, I was the audience's guide into a very scary place and dealing with a scary situation and an extremely scary person. Frank Booth, played so brilliantly by Dennis Hopper. And I understood that, and I saw that, and I said, okay, this is, it's like I'm sort of David's submersible. You know, it's not alter ego, it's not, you know, doppelganger, whatever. I