Twin Peaks Interviews

On the german website of The Universe of David Lynch I found an old article of Stephen Saban written for Details magazine in 1990 who has had the chance to meet the famous director while shooting his tv serie Twin Peaks and, what a lucky man, Lara herself.

"Why did you cast Lara Flynn Boyle as Donna?" I said. "Did you know her or did you see her in something?"

David Lynch: "Johanna Ray did the casting and she tells me if people are good, you know, or not. So I met Lara and, see, she´s my idea of the girl next door, the same way that Laura Dern was in Blue Velvet. She's smart and sexual but has, um, high moral fiber."

What more could you ask for in a girl? "You know, we all need a little fiber in our diets," I said.

"Right, we could all stand a little more of that."

Lara Flynn Boyle, nineteen, beautiful and vivaciously poised, led us to her trailer, a gleaming Fifties Airstream bullet that actually belongs to her boyfriend Kyle MacLachlan. "He'll lease it out to them and actually make money off of it," she said. "You know, it's a good idea." She apologized for its not being properly decorated, that she'd bought material with cowboys and Indians printed on it to make curtains. We settled in and she lit up a Marlboro.

I asked her how she got the part and she said, basically, "They needed a girl who would cry a lot. I was like, 'Great.'"

"Is this a part you really wanted because it was David Lynch?"

"No," she said, leaning back on the comfy trailer sofa. "I didn't know who he was."

Okay, I was shocked, I'll admit it. "You didn't know who he was?"

"No. Well, I'm from Chicago and I'm not, you know," she started to explain. "Blue Velvet, all those movies, are very big and that, but I was raised very much more mainstream, like families from Iowa, you know. So I didn't know who he was. After I'd gone in [for the part] my agent called and said, 'Well, what is he like? Is he weird?' And I was, like, 'He's okay.' And she was, like, 'Were you nervous?' And I was, like, 'No.'"

"You still haven't seen his films, like Blue Velvet at least?" The one starring your boyfriend?

"No."

Oh well. "How do you think Twin Peaks is gonna be accepted into people's homes?"

"We talk about this a lot," she said. "They wanna watch ALF, you know, and The Cosby Show. Everybody out there - the cast and people I meet - keep saying it's gonna go great, that it's gonna get picked up. I think it's gonna go great out there with the twenty people who watch David Lynch in the business, that really respect him. He has tons of followers but I think that many of his followers are the ones who don't watch TV. That's why I think the one saving grace is that it's also some form of soap opera."

"I hate to say it," I said anyway, "but I think it'll be a critical success that no one watches."

"Yeah, like Blue Velvet. What - number one movie of the Eigthies? I went to a performing arts high school and nobody ever talked about it. So I think in terms of that it'll be, like, 'Oh, great TV, very innovative.'" She took a drag of her cigarette. "Plus I think that TV audiences like to have cues when they should laugh and when they should cry. I'm very much like those audiences. When I went to see the pilot - and I'm in it - things that these people were laughing at I didn't think were funny. When I say to James, 'James, those are sirens,' the audience was roaring. I must be stupid because I never thought that was funny, you know."

"You're working for a genius," I said.

"Yeah," she said. "I'm starting to realize that as good an actor as you are, it also takes a really good director. If a director doesn't have any relationship with me where he can, like, give and take, then I'm going to stink no matter what scene I'm in. There's something magical. With [David], for the first time, I really forgot completely that I was being watched. That's never happened to me before. I don't know what exactly he does, and I think he does it so you don't know what exactly he does for the actors. Shooting a whole scene for, like, five hours. I mean, that's me too, but it takes a good director to do it."

"Do you know who the murderer is?" I asked Lara. "Come on."

"I have no idea," she said innocently. "I really don't."

I believed her. But she's an actress. "But today's the last day of the last episode."

"Let's just say that every single actor - and there are fourteen other regulars - is a suspect. But a lot of us have a pretty good idea who it is. But, um, it ends differently than you think."

There was a voice at her trailer door: "Lara, two minutes!"

"Do you have to go?"

"No, I have two minutes," she said.


"Did you meet Kyle on Twin Peaks?"

"Yes, and we started dating."

"But you didn't have any love scenes together. You're supposed to fall in love with James Marshall who plays James."

"Yeah, right," she said. "It's very funny because sometimes I'll have, like, this huge kissing scene with James and, like, Kyle'll be sitting in the trailer like this, you know?" she said, impersonating a man in turmoil.

"He doesn't understand that you're just acting?"

"Oh, we do," she said. "I understand that, he understands that, but, still, I don't like somebody else touching my boyfriend and he doesn't like somebody...."

Just then, of all people, James Marshall appeared at the door of her and Kyle's trailer. "We're ready to go now," he said.

And our two minutes were up."