It’s hard to think of a performer who has aged more gracefully than Kyle MacLachlan. At 61, he’s still got that matinee-idol chin, full, robust head of hair, and the good-natured warmth to go along with it. Yet beneath the leading-man looks beats the heart of a considered, compelling character actor, a sensibility he’s brought to decades of beautifully idiosyncratic work in successes and flops alike. Even when he’s villainous, it’s impossible not to love him. (Except when he’s Mr. C in Twin Peaks: The Return, of course.)

That kind of cerebral deadpan is key to his career-long collaboration with fellow Northwestern boy David Lynch, who plucked him from obscurity to star in his sprawling adaptation of Dune, whose disastrous reception nonetheless prepared him to become Lynch’s muse for Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks. But the Emmy-nominated actor has brought an intellectual, deadpan ease to decades of roles in film and TV, from the dogged Dale Cooper to the oddball Mayor of Portlandia.

In 2020, MacLachlan is busier than ever: from a small, fun turn in Josh Trank’s Capone to his portrayal of Thomas Edison in Michael Almereyda’s dizzying, Brechtian anti-biopic Tesla. A Sundance favorite of ours, MacLachlan’s turn as one of history’s so-called Great Men is but one of the film’s many highlights. Opposite Ethan Hawke’s mercurial, cerebral genius, MacLachlan’s Edison is stentorian, authoritative, and downright petty. But there are glimmers of tragedy to him, Almereyda highlighting the frustration of having all the money in the world, and still being unable to recognize the genius of your peers.

In anticipation of Tesla‘s release on Friday, August 21st, Consequence of Sound‘s own Clint Worthington had a nice long chat with MacLachlan about the winding road he’s taken throughout his 40 years on screen: from the lows of Dune and Showgirls to the highs of Twin Peaks and Portlandia and all the strange little roles in between. Together, we talk about his relationship with David Lynch, touch on some failed TV pilots, and 10 specific years that defined his career to date.

1984 – Dune

Dune (Universal)

You had a rather curious path to that role, right? You were just out of acting school, and you were doing Tartuffe.

Yeah, very good. I was just out of acting school. I graduated early, like March of ’82, to go to work immediately at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. I was lucky because I had a job right out of school, and not all of my classmates had that. I went down in rookie season there and then returned to Seattle, when I was finished in the Fall, and was cast in kind of a modern Tartuffe at the Empty Space Theater, which sadly is no longer there. It’s while I was doing that I was approached by a representative of a company called The Casting Company, this woman named Elizabeth calling around Seattle to theaters and other casting companies asking for recommendations of actors that fit the description of Paul.

I remember very distinctly getting a call on my answering machine — those old Panasonic answering machines with little tapes in them that you had to advance, bloo-loo-loop — and I thought somebody was sending me a prank call. It was kind of hard to decipher that it was a casting for a movie, that it was Dune. I was like “Why are they calling me?” It was a very confusing turn.

Turned out that yes, indeed, there was a casting agent that had come to Seattle. So I went and met her and was put on tape doing a scene in a hotel room in downtown Seattle. Kind of reading the dialogue between the two twin beds, you know, [laughs] trying to do my thing. She took that tape and showed it to David [Lynch] and Raffaella [de Laurentiis], they brought me down and I started the process.

I’d had no intention of [going into film] — I was obviously headed to New York, I was going to find a place there, start prepping and get cast out of New York for repertory theaters around the country. You know, that was my “path”. This changed things.

What was it like, then, moving from the notion of New York rep to this big, sprawling, weird science fiction epic — especially in the hands of someone like Lynch, who’d never done anything this big before.

Yeah, I think David and I were both in the same boat.

Is that where your bond started?

You know, I think we bonded in the meeting when I first met him, and we had a really nice conversation. David is the kind of person where, in the meeting, he talks about everything but the actual work. He’s really interested in the person and getting a sense of who they are, and the energy, and feel if they’re right. Are they able to do the role or not? He said to me, “You’re going to screen test,” and I said, “Okay, what’s that?” [Laughs.] I’d never been in front of a camera before.

But we hit it off, you know? It helped that we’re both from the Northwest, kind of similar upbringing — you’re young, running around with your buddies on your bikes, that kind of thing. So we shared a lot of things in common. And my knowledge of the [Dune] book was extensive, only because I was a huge fan. I’d been reading it since I was 15, so I really knew a lot about it. I tried to help in terms of scripts and bring my sensibilities to it as much as possible. Although I wasn’t that influential. But I did try to, you know, put my little stamp on it.

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I love hearing that you knew the book so well, because it’s such a dense work. I remember reading that, when the movie first came out, they would hand glossaries to people in the theater, so they could get a handle on all the terms. You didn’t need that, I presume?

I remember first trying to get into the book, and a couple times I had to go back to the beginning and re-read it, just to get all the names and places in my head. But once I got a handle on it, I was good. It’s still one of my top reads. I haven’t revisited for a while, but it was quite an influential book when I was growing up. I had a wonderful English teacher who allowed me to write quotes from the book on her blackboard — Mary Craig was her name. Very understanding, you know, what it’s like to be in junior high and these intensities that come with that — the focuses and the passions.

So Dune comes out and it gets a rather cold reception, which I’m sure was a blow for you. Did you have any concerns about your career starting off on such a strange foot?

When I signed on for the movie, I was required to sign for five Dune pictures, and they expanded that to also three non-Dune pictures for The Dino De Laurentiis Company. So they pretty much owned me, which I thought, Well, this is my opportunity; not in a lifetime do these things happen. Also, I was required to not appear in a movie or television show before the movie was released; they wanted Dune to be the first thing anyone saw of me. So I basically couldn’t work. And I didn’t realize how impactful that was going to be until later. A lot of times, you run on that kind of notoriety that you have — “he was cast as the lead in this movie, there’s potential and value there.” I wasn’t able to access that, and I didn’t realize how damaging that was going to be.

Of course, when the movie came out and was not really liked by the critics and didn’t do well at the box office, I didn’t have anything to fall back on. There was no TV show or movie that could show people a different side of me or perpetuate the career. So I kinda got dropped, you know? I had an agent and started the process of auditioning in Los Angeles — not quite from scratch because I had that bit of history, but there weren’t a lot of people who were very interested in working with me at the time.

1986 – Blue Velvet

I’d read Blue Velvet while I was filming Dune and I liked it. I understood the journey of this character [Jeffrey Beaumont] and I thought it was going to be really amazing. We were supposed to do it right after Dune came out, and Dino said no. I came back home, actually, to do some theater. But David contacted me and wanted me to play the role of Jeffrey. I think I had some hesitation initially — the film was pretty creepy, with this hard-hitting script. But it worked out, which was good; it’s to David’s credit that he came back to me. He didn’t have to do that.

I’ve always read Blue Velvet as a redemption of sorts for Lynch, a return to form for a filmmaker who maybe felt a little too uncomfortable with the size and the scope of the Dune project. Did it feel that way for you at all?

I think that’s a fair assessment. David had come from Eraserhead and Elephant Man to Dune, and that’s a huge step. And I don’t think the experience was great for him, you know. I mean, I loved it; I had nothing to compare it to. But David suffered a little bit, and it was pretty apparent when we got to Blue Velvet that we was more comfortable with a story in a world he understood. We had this cast and crew, we were working away in Wilmington. It was Laura [Dern] and Dennis [Hopper] and Isabella [Rossellini] and myself. You could put your hands on the story — it was an unusual story, but much smaller. I think everybody felt much more comfortable there.

1990/1991 – Twin Peaks, The Doors

Jeffrey Beaumont feels like a proto-Dale Cooper in a way, this boyish detective with these glimmers of darkness. Did that ever come into your head when you eventually came to Twin Peaks?

Plenty of people have pointed that out — that Jeffrey seems like Cooper. I guess you could maybe make that comparison. Looking at it and looking at the themes that David likes to work with, I could see it. Cooper, for me, is a completely different guy he’s coming from a different place. It’s possible he could have grown up to become Cooper, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily true.

But again, that’s one of those things where David came back to me for Twin Peaks. There were some questions about whether I was old enough to play this role, but it was incredible. Imagine: David Lynch coming to television for the first time! Which is what I think made all of us really excited to see and participate in.

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And we’ll definitely revisit Coop in a bit, here, obviously, but [Oliver Stone’s] The Doors was, I’m sure, a wild experience for you.

Oh my God, yeah. In some ways, it reminded me of the sprawling-ness of Dune, you know, and it kinda lumbers along in the same way. But I wasn’t the name guy, which was nice. It was a bow. I remember when I went to meet Oliver when he was casting; we’d actually met before that for Platoon. He was going to do that with Dino and his wife at the time, and I ultimately didn’t go forward with it. By this time, he’d done Platoon and he was a big deal, and we’d met again.

It was kind of a weird secret; not synchronicity, per se, but connection. Val [Kilmer] had actually been very close to getting a role in Dune, and then I came in here and Val was playing Jim [Morrison]. But I don’t think we knew that yet. I think all young Hollywood came out and said, “I can beat him.” I probably even felt the same way, knowing full well there was no way. But somehow, Oliver saw a Ray Manzarek in me.

He took one look at you and said “You, but in muttonchops.”

[Laughs.] Yeah, which was the most uncomfortable thing you could imagine. Awful, awful. But again, just a wonderful experience – we got to be pretend rock stars. I learned all the songs; while I was traveling through Europe at the time as I was lugging around a keyboard. And they would change all the time: Oliver would say, “We’re not going to do that song, we’re gonna do this one.” [sighs] But anyway, it was a giant, crazy show.

1994 – The Flintstones

Well, speaking of rock — segueway — let’s get back to ’94 with The Evil Cliff Vandercave in The Flintstones. That was the first time you really got to go arch with it and be a hammy villain, which was great.

Yeah, I went in to audition for Bruce Cohen and Brian [Levant], the director and producer, and I really didn’t know what I was doing. Obviously, I grew up with The Flintstones, loved it myself, but I just kind of went in and did this weird character and they loved it. I don’t think I’d ever had that kind of reception before, and I was like, “Okay, great.” And yeah, we definitely got a kind of arch character, with Halle Berry co-starring — so stunning. It was my first time working in that kind of comedy world.

I remember there were scenes where John Goodman and Rick [Moranis] would do the scene, and then huddle with Brian and take apart the comedy, take apart the rhythm, thinking about how to do it. I was fascinated by the fact that they took such an analytical approach, instead of feeling out the work. I’d never thought about that or worked that way before. And I thought, Well, maybe this is what it’s like to do comedy — that you really think it through intently.

When I look back on it now, I think of the craziness of that production, and people like Elizabeth Taylor coming to work and how all that was done. It was a special experience, and I’m still friendly with Bruce Cohen.

Read on to hear stories behind Showgirls, Sex and the City, Twin Peaks, and more…

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