Kicking off a New Year with a 4-minute interview transcript of 22-year-old Jennifer Lynch on “Good Morning America.” She spoke with Charles Gibson on Monday, September 17, 1990 about her then recently published book, “The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer.” This interview took place the morning after the 42nd Primetime Emmy Awards and a few weeks before the second season premiere on Sunday, September 30.
GOOD MORNING AMERICA INTERVIEW WITH JENNIFER LYNCH – SEPTEMBER 17, 1990
Jennifer’s “Good Morning America” interview started around 8:50 a.m. Returning from a commercial break, the familiar “Theme from Twin Peaks” played as the camera slowly zoomed in on a side table with Laura Palmer’s framed Homecoming Queen photo.
CHARLES GIBSON: “Love that music. It’s now 10 minutes before the hour. You might turn the phrase and say, ‘You’ve seen the body, now read the book.’ Laura Palmer, the mysterious teenager who washed ashore in a body bag in the first episode of last season’s hit series Twin Peaks, has of course brought new meaning to the term femme fatale.”
Gibson’s phrase is a play on “You’ve read the book, now see the movie.”
He served as a co-host of the ABC Television morning show from 1987 to 1998, first joining Joan Lunden on February 23, 1987. From a publicity perspective, Jennifer’s interview was an important one as Good Morning America was the most-watched morning show on American television from 1985 to 1995.
As Gibson provides a voiceover, the scene where Doc Hayward and Sheriff Harry S. Truman discover Laura is shown.
CG: “This morning we bring you news of the publication of “The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer,” a newly discovered journal chock full of sordid details about the weird doings in Twin Peaks.
“The new diary has been seen as though in a vision, I guess, by Jennifer Lynch, daughter of the series creator David Lynch, and she’s joining us this morning. Nice to have you here.
“I don’t quite understand, how does this all fit in? Why? We had the diary in the first series. Now this is another diary.”
JENNIFER LYNCH: “Right. Not necessarily. Laura did have a diary for public consumption, but she was a smart enough girl to know that people do sometimes go through their children’s drawers or friends go through their friend’s drawers and might, you know, venture through a diary. Some of what should be taken into consideration is that some of the explicit nature of Laura’s secret diary. We can’t really give her a hard time for that because she had no intentions of it being published, obviously, and did a really good job at keeping it hidden.”
CG: “So she didn’t think this would see the light of day.”
JL: “No, she didn’t.”
CG: “I see. Now is this just a book in and of itself or is this a book that’s going to be used in the second year of Twin Peaks?”
JL: “Well, hopefully it will stand on its own as a book of a diary of a young girl who was troubled to say the least as well. But it does play an important part in next season and will be discovered.”
Jennifer alluded to Donna Hayward’s discovery of Laura’s secret diary at Harold Smith’s house in Twin Peaks episode 2.003 (#10).
CG: “So did your dad come to you and say, ‘I want you to…’ … Was there a script for the second season of the show from which you wrote this or did you sort of make this up and he said ‘I will weave some of this into the series?”
JL: “Um, goodness … I was briefed beforehand, offered the position, accepted it, and then briefed, taken basically into a dark room and David [Lynch] and Mark [Frost] both looked at each other and said, ‘Well, I guess she needs to know.’ And I was told who the killer was.”
CG: “You were?”
JL: “Yes.”
CG: “Okay, hold on folks. You can guess what the next question’s going to be.”
JL: “Yeah, I can’t tell you that.”
CG: “What do you mean you can’t tell us?”
JL: “I can’t tell you.”
CG: “Nobody’s listening.”
JL: “That’s … I know you’re you’re you’re lying to me.”
CG: “Everybody lies in the series, why not do it here?”
JL: “Um no, I’d be disowned in in a matter of seconds and and I value my family life too much.”
CG: “Well, I read a good part of this [holding up the book].”
JL: “Well, I will say that some of the clues in the diary will become more evident once the series begins again. Some of them stick out like sore thumbs, but the careful reader, I think, will find those clues that are more like gum wrappers under the table, things most might not notice. So ‘Peaks’ fans, in my opinion, should know who the killer is.”
CG: “It’s extraordinary that this diary comes out now. I mean the old phrase in academics is, “You publish or perish.” Here’s a woman who’s perished and now she’s publishing. This got it all backwards. I can’t help but mention last night was not a good night for for ‘Twin Peaks.‘”
Gibson references how Twin Peaks was shut out at the 42nd Primetime Emmy Awards on September 16. The show received a “season-high 14 nominations” but only received two craft Emmy Awards for editing and costume design.
The interview continued between Gibson and Lynch.
JL: “No, it wasn’t. No.”
CG: “Was there sort of was there a somber feeling among the Lynch family and the Twin Peaks people?
JL: “I haven’t been able to speak to David yet or Mark. I can say I’m disappointed, you know, myself, but I think that everyone was pleased. Although this is a traditional thing to say, I mean it was a great honor to be nominated in particular.”
CG: “And nominated and nominated and nominated and nominated.”
JL: “Fourteen times for only nine hours of television is is a pretty good deal. So we should be smiling anyway.”
CG: “I see. It the honor is…
JL: “There’s more to come. I mean there’s next year, you know.”
CG: “Will there be a third diary found of Laura’s or are we going to stop at at two?”
JL: “I think she was pretty much done writing at this point. [Laughs]”
CG: “Do you think? She wasn’t that prolific.”
JL: “No.”
CG: “Boy, if she can continue to publish out of the grave, she’s she’s doing quite a job.”
JL: “We should all be so lucky.”
CG: “Right. Well, Jennifer, good good luck with this.”
JL: “Thank you very much.”
CG: “And and this will be woven into the… One last shot.”
JL: “Yes.”
CG: “We’ve wrapped up the interview. Thank you very much. ‘Good Morning America’ continues. Now, who did it?”
JL: “I can’t tell you [Laughs]”
CG: “Still no? All right. Jennifer Lynch, thank you for being here.”
Charles Gibson tried his hardest to get Jennifer to share the secret of who killed Laura Palmer. She did an awesome job of avoiding his direct line of questioning.
“The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer” hit book stands on September 15, two days before this interview aired on ABC Television’s long-running morning show. The Associated Press published a syndicated story where Lynch said “she knew who the killer is” and that careful readers “will know the clues and who the killer is.” This is the same answer she gave Gibson on September 17.
What a delight to add this interview as part of the ever-grown archive of all things Twin Peaks.
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