In another world, Kyle MacLachlan might have been known for conventional leading man roles, the handsome lead of a worthy drama or the dashing love interest in a romantic comedy. But his career took a different path. MacLachlan is best known for playing characters who seem normal at first blush but are revealed to be darker, more eccentric, more deviant.
His career effectively launched with Blue Velvet (1986), David Lynch's surreal story of violence and voyeurism. MacLachlan played Jeffrey Beaumont, a young man whose discovery of a severed human ear on a suburban lawn propels him into an unsettling world beneath the sunny surface of his home town. He brought a wide-eyed earnestness to the role that made the descent into darkness troubling.
It is this same earnest quality that makes him compelling as Special Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks. Lynch recognised something essential about MacLachlan as an actor: he is someone an audience will trust, and no matter how strange things get, they will go wherever he leads.
During an interview to discuss the book, conducted by video call, technical problems meant MacLachlan could see the reporter but the reporter could not see him. "Oh, shoot," he said, sounding genuinely apologetic. "Well, I look great. I've got a cool sweater on. I've got wireframe glasses. My hair is grey." He was drinking a flask of coffee and calling from the Today Show studios in New York, between filming two segments. He said he felt 'a sense of terror' about the book's release.