The Mystery of Georgia – Part 4 – Oral History and a Missing Piece to the Puzzle

Coca-Cola Japan Co., Ltd. located in Shibuya-ku, Tokyo held a press conference to announce the production of a series “Twin Peaks” commercials for their new Georgia Coffee drink campaign on January 18th, 1993 at the Imperial Hotel in Hibiya, Tokyo. The campaign was aimed at solidifying and further developing the position of the Georgia brand, which accounts for approximately 40% of sales amid intensifying competition for market share in canned coffee, and is an unprecedentedly bold and large-scale campaign.  The first chapter aired at 6:59:30 PM on January 20th, 1993 on multiple stations. Below is my attempt at doing an oral history based on numerous quotes I’ve complied. Through the quotes I stumbled onto something quite interesting

David Lynch: The commercials that were most surprising to me were those for Georgia Coffee because they were set in Twin Peaks and featured many of the cast in a continuing story about a Japanese man called Ken who seems to be in Twin Peaks looking for his missing wife. . …. Namoi. Yeah. He’d lost her. Those were really fun to do. They were only thirty seconds apiece – four of them –  things have gotta move real fast. (2)

Taka Higuchi: I had very short hair. They at first wanted Ken Saito to be a Business man. But they said that no Businessman has such short hair so they changed the concept to a Detective. David Lynch, around that time, he was the world famous… THE most famous director. It was like meeting God or something . It was like oh wow, this is the REAL David Lynch. He would always remind me to do my meditation. (6)

Chris Rodley: Was it at all a concern to take something like Peaks and make an ad that might undermine some of the seriousness or magic of the series?

David Lynch: Yes. I’m really against it in principle, but they were so much fun to do, and they were only running in Japan and so it just felt OK. 

Chris Rodley: So you wouldn’t have done them if American market? 

David Lynch: No, I don’t think so. 

Chris Rodley: Presumably you were approached by the coffee company to do them because the series did so much for the general ‘profile’ of coffee?

David Lynch: Oh yes, definitely. Georgia Coffee is a canned coffee. There are like 150,000 different canned beverages, or something like that, in Japan, and new ones coming out every week. It’s a huge business. But Georgia Coffee is the most popular canned coffee, and they’ve got all kinds of different flavours. But the canners did not like the commercials we did. They wanted them to be more traditional and that’s why they didn’t continue. We were supposed to do a second year, and do four more thirty-second spots, but they didn’t want to do them. (2)

Mädchen Amick:  I can recall feeling like it was just another Twin Peaks scene… but then when I came across the finished commercials years later, I thought they were super cool. Very fun and cheeky! (7)

Kyle MacLachlan: Georgia is delicious and I drank several bottles while filming the commercial. I’m also very happy with how the commercial turned out. (1)

Taka Higuchi: I like Italian coffee. Georgia Coffee tastes a little too sweet for me. Very sweet. But, you know, there is a story. On the set, I drink for real. Kyle is always <spits out on the ground>. The commercial executives were there, right… so I cannot spit out. So I drank so much… so much Georgia at that time. <laughs>(6)

Harry Goaz: David Lynch told me I looked “snockered”  !!!!! (7)

Kimmy Robertson: Yeah…They offered to give us money to come and do these commercials for Japan. I have them…. It turned out to be I think five in all. Three for me or something like that. Maybe it was two. We just went there and did it, and the Japanese businessmen gave us gifts for being in their commercial it was really nice and bowed to us – it was cool.

dugpa: So they flew you to Japan to film these? Or…

Kimmy Robertson: No it was here in Hollywood and I think my hair was really, really frizzy or curly or something. I remember something weird about ‘em. But they were like a one-dimensional Twin Peaks. It was kinda cool; it was like we were making our own, I dunno, it was really different to be doing a commercial as the Twin Peaks people. It was eerie.

dugpa: Harry (Goaz) was in that…

Kimmy Robertson: Dana was in it. I know David called Dana at the last minute. 

dugpa: Oh wow! I haven’t seen that one.

Kimmy Robertson: Yeah, I think there are five.

dugpa: I’ve only seen four of them.

Kimmy Robertson: I have… I just cleaned out my bookcase. So I don’t …I was looking for some stuff yesterday and I couldn’t find it. So I don’t know where it is, and when we’re done here I’ll look. I have a cardboard box sitting in the middle of my living room – that’s probably in.

dugpa: That would be great! (3)

Sadly Kimmy wasn’t able to find the tapes and I assumed maybe Kimmy could have been mistaken until reviewing this interview done with Catherine Coulson many years later…

Catherine Coulson: We shot them all in the summer—last summer—and then I think they started airing maybe in January of this year. And I hear they’ve been phenomenally successful, but I actually haven’t seen them. David has a copy, but I haven’t gone and looked at it yet.

Craig Miller (from “Wrapped in Plastic”): They were filmed here in the U.S., though, weren’t they?

Catherine Coulson: Yes. We filmed them here with a Japanese actor and with Kyle MacLachlan, Harry Goaz… Kimmy Robertson, Madchen Amick, Dana Ashbrook, Michael Horse, and me. We did them over a period of a week. This wonderful Japanese actor… he was looking for his girlfriend. And he comes to Cooper to help him find her. There’re all these clues, and they all have the letter “G”. Actually, it’s a very tasteful commercial for coffee. It’s this canned coffee, the most popular soft drink in Japan.

Craig Miller: We’re getting people frantically asking us here at the magazine how they can see these commercials, and we tell them that we don’t know of any way here in the U.S. From reports that we’re received, it almost sounds like the commercials are short parodies of Twin Peaks. I guess David is directing these—

Catherine Coulson: No, they’re not parodies at all. They’re in the style of Twin Peaks, but it’s like a “no play,” you know that kind of Japanese play? It’s very simple. I think that one of the reasons why Twin Peaks appealed to the Japanese mind so much is that there’s a certain kind of clean line about the way the show unfolded, and these commercials are extremely simple and very beautiful. There’s lightning flashing outside the window, and the Log Lady says, “It’s true” a lot. And I understand that people in Japan now say, “It’s true.” It’s an amazing thing as an actor to think that you’ve actually had that kind of impact on people.

John Thorne (from “Wrapped in Plastic”): Have you had the opportunity to go to Japan?

Catherine Coulson: No. You know, I’m really mad. I’ve never gotten to go since this phenomenon. I’d been to Japan before I became the Log Lady, but I would love to go to Japan and be mobbed! It would be a great experience! In fact, if you put that in your magazine, maybe somebody will invite me! I’ve wanted to go so much, because when I did the Twin Peaks Festival in Snoqualmie—by the way, there’s going to be another one—I really did experience a flying wedge of security guards, and I have to say that Twin Peaks fans are really wonderful. They’re very, very respectful people. Running into whole large groups of Japanese tourists, and having them really call me the Rog Rady, was a real tickle! It’s been great being the Log Lady. (4)

It was only years later that Dana himself would reference it when being asked about the finale of Season 2.

Chris Holt: What is your opinion of the final episode of Twin Peaks? 

Dana Ashbrook: I don’t even know the last time I saw it, maybe ten years ago! I have no idea, I don’t know what was going on there. I know that the scene we shot in the Diner which was a repeat of the scene in the pilot we had shot for a Japanese coffee commercial, the German’s are always on time thing, there were two Japanese actors in the same scene as well it was really funny. I couldn’t tell you though, I don’t know man, I have no idea. I’ll leave it up to the people that watch it, the fans. (5)

Whoa! So maybe it really did happen… Could there really be a missing fifth Georgia Coffee Commercial? But would that mean that Andrea Hays also shot a scene for Georgia Coffee and was cut or is Dana also potentially mixing up the Diner scenes from the series? I had to ask Andrea and here is what she said…

Andrea Hays: I personally wasn’t in it but (I was told) they had a “Heidi Like” character! (7)

So mysterious! Now as to what the actual scene was, we may never know. Everyone I’ve asked who was part of the project doesn’t seem to remember the scene. I could imagine that it could this have been an epilogue scene given that Dana mentions that “there were two Japanese actors in the same scene”. Perhaps the series ended with Ken and Asami running into Bobby at the RR Diner. Maybe they finish their coffee and we see them drive out of Twin Peaks on Reinig Road past the sign, top down in Asami’s Von Senger Waibel. Perhaps we will never know. I’d like to think that is what happened.

I love that after over 30 years there are still some mysteries left to be unearthed in the world of Twin Peaks. Let us now crown the Dana Ashbrook RR Diner scene with Detective Ken Saito, Asami, and a “Heidi Like” character from this day forward as a new “Missing Piece” in Twin Peaks lore.

SOURCES

1 – Japan Press Conference – Published by Japan Food Journal – Jan 18 1993

2 – David Lynch and Chris Rodley – Lynch on Lynch – Published 1997

3 – World of Blue – Kimmy Robertson Interview 2007

4 – Wrapped in Plastic Magazine Vol. 1 #5 1993

5 – Dana Ashbrook – Starburst Magazine 2023

6 – Taka Higuchi – Nov 2025 Japan Interview

7 – Andrea Hays, Mädchen Amick, and Harry Goaz – Dec 2025 Conversations

Thank you to Taka Higuchi, John Thorne, Andrea Hays, Mädchen Amick, and Harry Goaz for their contributions to this article.