To mark the release of his new memoir ‘Fictional Selves,’ Twin Peaks star Kyle MacLachlan recently embarked on a book tour sharing stories from his colorful career across the United States and beyond.
On October 2, 2026, he appeared at San Francisco’s historic Sydney Goldstein Theater.
Upon arriving, ticket holders filed in and collected their books which were included with the price of admission.
Tucked inside the front cover of each book was a special trading card featuring Kyle in one of his iconic roles, including Paul Atreides (Dune), Special Agent Dale Cooper (Twin Peaks), Orson Hodge (Desperate Housewives), Mr. Mayor (Portlandia), and more. The cards were designed by Steve Engert exclusively for this event.
The Flintstones’ Cliff Vandercave may not have been my first choice, but this was still a nice surprise.
A cardboard cutout of Dougie Jones directed attendees to a table in the theater’s lobby for photo ops.
The book’s cover features the face of the real Kyle MacLachlan split with an image of his “fictional self” Dale Cooper, and fans could pose similarly with a number of the memorable characters he has played over the years.
KYLE MACLACHLAN IN CONVERSATION WITH JESSE HAWTHORNE FICKS
The program began at about 7:45 p.m. with a montage of clips from Kyle’s 40 year career in film and television, set to Angelo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks Theme. The audience applauded as each memorable character appeared onscreen, with an especially emphatic reaction to our favorite Special Agent.
Finally, Kyle took the stage with Academy of Art University’s film history coordinator Jesse Hawthorne Ficks and the two settled in for an hour long conversation.
Jesse first asked Kyle about his interactions with fans and how well he can clock which specific work they are most attached to as they approach.
“Yeah, I’m pretty good. And through the years I’ve gotten better. The David Lynch fans, I need to cross the street,” Kyle said with a laugh.
“You can kind of tell. But I’m continually surprised…Younger people come up to me, and they love Dune. Or they love Cooper, of course, from Twin Peaks. And I’m like, ‘How did you find this? Digging in the archives of your parents’ old DVDs?’”
Between the accessibility of streaming and new adaptations of classic works like Denis Villenueve’s Dune, there are many paths available for younger generations to find this body of work.
On the topic of Dune, Kyle talked about his own introduction to the world of sandworms and the spice melange as a teenager.
“My friend Jim gave me a copy of Dune and said, ‘I think you might like this book.’ And I read it. It took me three times to get past page 60, but I was absolutely mesmerized at 15. I read the book at least once a year – 16, 17, 18 – all the way through my life. It was like my bible.”
Despite his intimate understanding of the source material, Kyle was made to screen test for the role of Paul Atreides twice.
“I did a second screen test in Mexico City because they didn’t like my hair…Dino [De Laurentiis] didn’t like my hair. ‘I don’t like hair. Fix!’” he said in a raspy accent.
“That’s my Dino. You gotta get the audio[book] because I do a great Dino.”
Having been impatient enough to buy and finish listening to the audiobook while waiting for my hard copy, I can confirm. Kyle’s impersonations of Dino De Laurentiis, David Lynch, and even Everett McGill are spot on.
Having observed something seemingly incongruent between Kyle’s innate silliness and the darkness of David Lynch’s work, Jesse asked about humor in works like Blue Velvet.
“You know, David’s silly too. He has a great sense of humor and he loves to laugh,” he said.
Catching himself using the present tense while talking about his frequent collaborator and lifelong friend, Kyle paused to say, “He’s very present to me, so forgive me.”
“He’s just having the time of his life, you know?” he recalled of David Lynch’s lighthearted portrayal of Gordon Cole.
“There’s a reality, there’s a truth there that you never lose the sincerity, but you’re also having fun with it at the same time.”
Perhaps my favorite insight of the night was Kyle’s description of his creative partnership with David Lynch.
“I really was like a submersible. So David creates this world…he’s the ship right on top of the water, that’s David. And I’m tethered to the ship as the submersible. And I’m going down in these sort of dark places with a light, and I’m like, ‘Come on, audience, let’s go! Let’s go get scared!’”
He went on to describe the importance of mutual trust in this type of partnership, saying, “It doesn’t happen if the environment around the camera, and that creative space which I think of as sacred space, isn’t full of joy and love and freedom to create and play.”
Even with that trust, there have been challenges along the way. Mr. C, for example, was outside of Kyle’s comfort zone.
“I saw this character, Mr. C, and I was like, ‘Oh, boy.’ And I said, ‘I’ve never done anything like this.’ I mean, the closest I came was a little movie called Where the Day Takes You, and I played kind of a bad guy in that one for a minute. But this was, like, just a psychopath. I said, ‘This guy has to be the scariest guy in the world or it doesn’t work.’”
Where the Day Takes You is a 1992 drama about a group of teenagers living on the streets of Los Angeles. The cast features several Twin Peaks alumni, including some who would be brought into the fold for the eventual third season. Alongside Kyle MacLachlan, the movie stars Lara Flynn Boyle, Robert Knepper, and Balthazar Getty. What a lineup!
Back to the genesis of Mr. C.
“It sort of started with the shell of Mr. C – the outfit, the look, the hair, the face, everything,” he said of the character’s menacing appearance.
“Meanwhile I’m kind of working on the interior of him, and I’m working on just subtle things, like he doesn’t blink…there’s power in that. And I start pitching my voice. And when I look at someone, what do I want from them? I don’t look at people as people. They’re not human. They have no value to me other than what I can make them do.”
This was a new kind of mentality for Kyle to sit with, and he made a point to symbolically hang up the character at the end of the day before returning home to his family.
“I’m really proud of the work I did on that. And also, I felt like I was handling nitroglycerin or something, you know? I wanted to be really careful with this energy because it was very bad energy.”
As talk about Twin Peaks: The Return continued, Kyle offered one interesting nugget about the difference between Dougie Jones in the script and what ended up onscreen.
“The idea was, in the script, that there were moments when Cooper emerged during the course of the episodes…The One Armed Man, he would appear to me. The idea was that I was sort of sitting on the edge of the bed and then [buzzing sound] and then I would be like Cooper for a moment, which, I think when they saw the edit, they said, ‘No, we want to delay that Cooper moment.’”
I am holding out hope that fans will get to read that script one day, but for now, I can appreciate this tiny glimpse at the creative process that brought us a truly singular piece of art.
KYLE MACLACHLAN ANSWERS AUDIENCE QUESTIONS
About halfway through the event, moderator Jesse Hawthorne Ficks turned to the audience for a few questions. A 20-year-old fan whose mother introduced her to David Lynch’s work ask Kyle about his favorite Lynch film that he didn’t appear in.
“I love everything he’s done. But you know, The Straight Story…there’s a side of David that I know, and occasionally you get a glimpse of it in other stuff, but this was like David’s real heart and love,” he said to applause.
A fan named Amara asked a fantastic question about the evolving art of storytelling.
“In a time where there is such an institutional push for automating and just not centering human voices and stories, my question for you is what scares you or excites you in the future cinema?” she asked.
“These young creatives that are interested in their own personal stories…that is just so important in filmmaking. It’s what David did, you know? So that still gives me hope,” Kyle responded, highlighting young artists who aren’t afraid to embrace their own unique perspectives.
“I want to believe that that’ll never disappear, because you need those individuals. You need to tell a personal story that will resonate with people. Maybe not everybody, but it’ll resonate with certain people and that’s important.”
READ ‘FICTIONAL SELVES’
Beyond appreciating him as Agent Cooper, Jeffrey Beaumont, or a long list of other notable characters, it was wonderful to hear Kyle MacLachlan as Kyle MacLachlan at this event. Thank you to City Arts & Lectures for facilitating this appearance and to Kyle MacLachlan for his candor.
This talk barely scratched the surface of what can be found in ‘Fictional Selves’ and I cannot recommend it enough. You can order the book from indie retailers or directly through Penguin Random House here: https://sites.prh.com/fictional-selves
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