In this FRONTPAGE story, David Lynch’s golden boy and TikTok’s reigning comedy king reminisces on a damn fine acting career.
The fact that Kyle MacLachlan has to stop our interview after just 30 seconds to attend to his coffee is almost too on the nose. As a devout acolyte of the cult of Twin Peaks, seeing the actor who will forever be synonymous with the TV show’s caffeine-loving FBI agent rush to pour himself a (damn fine) cup of coffee is like seeing Santa Claus come out of the chimney.
“I love it… so nice,” he says, smiling as he gently blows the billowing steam off his fresh cup and I struggle to maintain composure (though my suppressed glee is making me stutter). “I’m trying a different blend, a stronger blend,” he continues. “I have a coffee that I love that I collaborated with in Washington called the Walla Walla Roastery. They do serious coffee culture.” He’s referring to Brown Bear Melange (aka “Kyle’s Blend”), and it’s just one arm of MacLachlan’s burgeoning food empire in his native Washington state, the other being a winery called Pursued by Bear.
Now at age 65, MacLachlan is at the point in his career where he is working seemingly constantly but with the freedom to invest wholeheartedly in his hobbies. In addition to managing his coffee and wine offshoots, this year saw the release of his venture into true crime with the podcast Varnamtown, the result of a two-year investigation with journalist Joshua Davis into a Southern town’s history with drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. In April he appeared in the well-received TV adaptation Fallout (based on the video game series), in June he reprised his role as Riley’s dad in Pixar’s Inside Out 2, and in August he co-starred in the thriller Blink Twice — the directorial debut of Zoë Kravitz. “I loved, loved, loved working with Zoë,” he gushes. “She reminded me that we’d actually met on a plane when she was, like, six. She was traveling with her dad and we said ‘Hello.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my god, that makes me feel very old.’”
It may not make him feel any younger, but MacLachlan’s 40-plus impressive years in the industry cemented him as a legend. Any performer would be lucky to have an iconic role enshrined in the public consciousness over multiple generations, but MacLachlan has an entire résumé full of such roles, so many that he is “pretty good at identifying the fan with the show or the project” when they approach him. He certainly has my number: “Twin Peaks world and David Lynch,” he guesses, eyeing me up and down. “But it could also be Sex and the City.” And just like that, he’s read my brain with crystal clarity.
Now, after decades of unforgettable performances in beloved films and TV shows, MacLachlan is entering a whole new chapter of cultural relevance, one that has him recognized not as one of Hollywood’s finest character actors, but as Kyle MacLachlan, viral comedy unicorn.
***
Kyle MacLachlan was born in Yakima, Washington, one of three boys “all very close in age and very close with each other.” Theater was something he was exposed to at an early age: “We happened to live adjacent to a park in which there was an old apple cold-storage warehouse that had been converted into a community theater. Inevitably in the summer, because our mom was involved in the arts and in the theater as well, we would end up helping out, either running spotlights for a show or working the concession stand or helping take tickets or something like that. And then watching the show. So the environment of that theater was very much a part of our lives. That definitely had an influence on me,” he reflects. “Because I could sense the magic of that environment and that world, and it was very alluring.”
It was “easy to fall into” theater in high school, but his initial plan was to be an opera singer. He had “vague notions” that practice could go somewhere, “but I realized early on that I didn’t have the discipline nor the instrument, probably, to take it further. I did an operetta, I’m sure I was awful. I enjoyed it, but I haven’t really done much with it, to be quite honest. That muscle has not been exercised.”
Does this mean he’s a shower-singer?
“No, no, no,” he scoffs. “At this age, that’s definitely not what you want.”
Fresh out of the University of Washington, MacLachlan delved into the classics, netting his first professional job at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. His cleft chin and boyish good looks meant he was a natural fit to play Romeo, and he still holds a strong affinity for Shakespeare (his winery is even named after a stage direction from the Bard’s The Winter’s Tale). He would notably appear in a modernist film adaptation of Hamlet with Ethan Hawke in 2000, but he’s only appeared onstage twice since his school days. It’s not off the table, certainly, but he’s got no current plans to return. “Who knows? I don’t know if I’ll get a chance.”
But it was a production of Molière’s Tartuffe that changed everything. A casting agent caught a show and recommended him for an audition. The role? Paul Atreides. The film? A huge studio production of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic Dune. The director? A rising auteur named David Lynch. “It’s indescribable, right?” he says, still incredulous after all these years. “I mean, why me? I was in the middle of Seattle doing a play in a 99-seat equity house planning to go to New York. And the call came in to audition, and I didn’t really even grasp what it was. I was like, ‘Paul, and there’s a movie. And what?’”
Kyle MacLachlan['Twin Peaks'] came out of this crazy idea that David Lynch was going to do television. And we all looked at each other and said, ‘How does that happen?'
MacLachlan was very familiar with the source material. “I had read the books, God, nine, 10 times, before hearing anything about the movie. It was really an important book to me, it spoke to me at a certain age. When you’re looking for a hero or inspiration, someone who inspires you, someone you want to be like, that’s what Paul was to me.” As a total novice to the film industry expected to suddenly anchor such a large production, it’s hard to imagine how he kept his cool and stayed focused. “A couple of things kept me together. One was just David Lynch. David is levelheaded, a nice guy, and explained things in very simple terms. And then I think that I was so fresh out of school, I had this kind of confidence that comes with that age. I graduated from a fairly prestigious training program of a small group, so you sort of feel like you can do anything. There was, I think, a lot of naiveté, as well. The unknowing, the not knowing of what the long-term repercussions of something like this, successful or not successful, might be.”
He just approached it like a job, he continues. A seven-month job, based in Mexico City. “It was like, this is what I was trained to do, I just got into that mode. I was used to going away to summer stock, being away from home for months at a time, so that wasn’t a really big deal. I was surrounded by really fun, nice, interesting people — actors who I respected and couldn’t believe I was working with, but who were just regular people. I really embraced the experience and had a wonderful time with it.”
When Dune finally hit theaters in 1984, it was far from a success. It was, truth be told, a disaster — first, critically eviscerated, and then it failed to recoup its budget. Though a cult fan base would eventually grow, even the most die-hard Lynch aficionados can agree that it’s his worst directorial outing. “The calls came and they were like, ‘Well…’” MacLachlan laughs. Contractually bound not to make any other films until the movie came out, he was unable to accept other work, meaning his big-screen debut not only landed with a thud but nixed any projects for the foreseeable future. “‘I’m sure everything will go fine,’” he told himself. “And of course, it didn’t. It was very challenging, but I approached it with this positive energy.”
Is it hard for him, now, seeing Dune find phenomenal success with the Denis Villeneuve films starring Timothée Chalamet in the role MacLachlan made his own? Not at all. “What I didn’t expect was a sense of nostalgia, actually listening to the lines and seeing the visuals, and enjoying that journey just as much as I enjoyed our journey. Enjoying it almost in a parallel universe with ours.”
***
Dune may have had the opposite-than-intended effect on culture at large, but it was merely the gateway into one of cinema’s most inspired actor/director pairings: Lynch and MacLachlan. It was while they were filming Dune that Lynch presented MacLachlan with a script titled Blue Velvet. Released in 1986, it hit the film world with a sledgehammer, setting a benchmark in American surrealism, and it remains one of the most critically acclaimed and widely studied films ever made. He smiles when I describe how the film was my entire life at age 17, but seems unsurprised.
Unbelievably, it was only the second script MacLachlan had ever read. “I read it and immediately I was taken by it. I was like, ‘Oh, this is an interesting journey.’ I spent enough time with David to understand or begin to understand his sense of humor, where things were funny, the darkness of it, the quirky humor, which we share. I know that some of the stuff was pretty tense and challenging, but David makes it fun and creative. You’re in the moment and you’re connecting and you’re feeling these things, and you’re going through the experience. And that is, I think, at the core, the reason why I love what I do.”
The collaboration between MacLachlan and Lynch soon reached its apex a few years later when Twin Peaks hit TV screens around the world in 1990. Presaging the era of prestige TV by a decade, it was nothing short of a pop culture phenomenon. “It came out of this crazy idea that David Lynch was going to do television. And we all looked at each other and said, ‘How does that happen?’” Lynch spotted the potential of television as a medium long before similarly pedigreed film directors did; what is perhaps most shocking looking back is that the powers that be at ABC trusted his bizarre vision. “We were all pretty surprised about that,” adds MacLachlan. “First of all, that they agreed to do the pilot. And then second of all, they actually picked it up for a run, because it was unlike anything on television at the time, but was embraced. The audience, they really loved it.”
As an actor’s actor, MacLachlan, in spite of his success, began to chafe at his image of the hero with a heart of gold, or as writer Rich Cohen described him for Rolling Stone, being typecast as a “boy next door, cooking up something weird in the basement.” He chuckles, recalling this line perfectly. “In those early years, I felt like I was sort of teetering into that type of character. Coming from a theater tradition, where the expectation is that you are able to do many different things, you can play different types of roles, different qualities of roles onstage. And I wanted to press against that, to try to find something that was a little more, I don’t know if mainstream is the word, but possibly recognizable, not so tortured.”
Initially, this meant diving into roles that were — and try as I might, I could not sugarcoat this for him — sleazy, showing a side of MacLachlan that has been used often and to great effect. It started with villains in cult ’90s films like The Flintstones (1994) and Showgirls (1995), and ramped up to his seasons-long arc as the vile Orson Hodge in Desperate Housewives. But sleaze aside, many directors saw a gravitas that lent itself to playing real-life figures like musician Ray Manzarek in The Doors (1991), FDR in the series Atlantic Crossing (2020), Thomas Edison in the anti-biopic Tesla (2020), and the spirit of Cary Grant in the gay rom-com Touch of Pink (2004), the latter being so obscure that he was gobsmacked I even knew about it (and, reader, I cannot urge you strongly enough to find clips of this).
Perhaps because Twin Peaks got his feet wet at a time when “TV acting” was still deemed lesser to film, MacLachlan made the jump to series acting early, and to rich rewards. In addition to Desperate Housewives, he has devoted fan bases dedicated to his roles as the hapless mayor in the improv-based sketch show Portlandia, as the Captain in the sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and as the witless first husband to Charlotte in Sex and the City. This role, in particular, holds a special place in fans' hearts – which I know firsthand as a super fan. After polling fellow super fans on what we most needed to hear from MacLachlan himself about making the show, one very important question emerged: How on earth did he get so wet (nay, ungodly sweaty) in the episode that his character, Trey, is glistening in his boxer shorts on a tennis court?
“The makeup ladies came out and they had all this baby oil. And I was like, ‘I think this is a little much.’ And they were like, ‘No, no.’ And they were rubbing this oil on me. And I was like, ‘Okay, I think I’m kind of shiny but whatever.’”
All of MacLachlan’s facets came together when he reunited with Lynch in 2017 for his magnum opus, Twin Peaks: The Return, a series that has become so lauded that, in many critical circles, it’s considered one of the most important films of the 21st century, cauterizing the conversation of what, if any, boundaries between the mediums still exist.
MacLachlan, who played three different roles in the project, is entirely unphased by the grandiosity of the claim: “That is one of the great things about television, and I think many actors will say the same thing: You get to spend time with the character and go on a wonderful journey with them. I’m particularly proud of my work in the film. It’s funny, when you come to set with David, it’s like figuring out a puzzle, a really fun puzzle, and how to make it really pure. There’s a simple way to do it, and that is always the best, in my experience. Just keep it simple, because it has the most power.”
***
So what is Kyle MacLachlan doing when he’s not acting, wine-making, coffee-brewing, or podcast-helming? First and foremost, he’s enjoying family life. “The most fun I have during the downtime is spending time with my son. He’s 15 now, and he takes precedence over anything. He wants to go surfing? We’re getting up at 5:30 or 6 and getting the car ready and we’re going out to Malibu or we’re going out to Zuma or El Porto. He goes out and surfs. I get my little chair. It’s the most precious time that I have.”
He is also something of a lowkey fashion god. In the ’90s, MacLachlan famously modeled with his then-partner Linda Evangelista, memorably stunting in an ad for Barneys with a live lobster on his head. “It was a little smelly but we got a great shot,” he laughs. He also opened Prada’s Fall/Winter 2022 runway show: “Let’s do something different, have some fun, and revisit a world that I hadn’t really had much touch with for quite a long time,” he reminisces. His personal style “tends to run a little more classic. That’s where I’m most comfortable, I guess.”
Kyle MacLachlanThere’s a simple way to do it, and that is always the best, in my experience. Just keep it simple, because it has the most power.
Then there is the not-so-small matter of his social media, something not many of his peers can claim. MacLachlan is taking on one of the most difficult roles an actor can ever play: themselves. His success at it has found a new lease on his celebrity as a Memelord; his TikTok and Instagram videos are irreverence personified — one minute he’s walking through his house lip-syncing to Chappell Roan in a hot dog suit, the next he’s recreating photos of Lorde, or advertising his wine with a disembodied arm coming out of a cooler, or huffing laundry detergent like it’s cocaine. The list goes on. It’s a career-pivot that acts simultaneously as promo for his upcoming work, a reflexive memeification of his past, and an introduction for a new fan base that may have no idea he’s an actor.
“These are not meant to be anything other than a fun experience for people. They have all responded in a delightful way,” he laughs when I ask about his inspiration for his truly outré pieces of content. “I love it. I’m having so much fun.”
Far from pandering to a younger crowd, MacLachlan’s genuine enthusiasm for what he’s doing is infectious, but it has also opened him up to a whole new world of pop culture collaboration. It’s why we live in the timeline where Kyle MacLachlan and Charli XCX are having a conversation about how much he’s loving Brat Summer while using her tracks to soundtrack his latest antics. It’s led to the internet formally crowning him a “babygirl.” How does he feel about it? “I was initially not exactly sure,” he says, “but I did a little bit of research.” Is his son embarrassed by some of the things his dad is doing? “I check in with him. I ask him, ‘Am I embarrassing you? Is this something that you are you okay with?’ And he says, ‘No, no, Dad, actually, you’re giving me a lot of cred at school.’ I was like, ‘Okay. That’s nice to hear.’”
MacLachlan is someone who professes to always be looking forward, yet I find our interview to be reminiscent of all his public appearances: tirelessly discussing his previous projects and former colleagues, never for a moment being anything less than present and celebratory of his body of work. More than humble, I’m disarmed by how eager he is to keep talking about the moments he’s been a part of. “Doing something well is rewarding, incredibly rewarding, but also I’m a worrier by nature. And I’m always going, ‘Oh, I could’ve been... maybe I should’ve done... maybe I could’ve.’ So there are all these thoughts – keeping those at bay and just recognizing ‘No, no, no, no. It was good work.’”
