Today’s Hollywood stars are more “sophisticated” and “aware of the business” than in the days Kyle MacLachlan was starting out, the Sex and the City star said today as he gave his thoughts on another Twin Peaks reboot.
As a budding actor, MacLachlan played the role of Paul Atreides in David Lynch’s 1980s version of Dune and he spotlighted how different the approach is for today’s young stars such as Timothée Chalamet, who plays Atreides in Denis Villeneuve’s version, and Chalamet’s co-star Zendaya.
“When I started I was plucked from relative obscurity from Seattle, where they had found me for Dune,” MacLachlan told a packed house at Cannes’ Espace Miramar this afternoon. “I thought I was going to work as a repertory theater actor and then suddenly I was in LA and I was like, ‘What am I doing? I have no idea about the movie business’.”
The likes of Chalamet and Zendaya, on the other hand, are “so sophisticated and so aware of the business,” MacLachlan added. “They are smart, clever and have everyone lined up. They have agents working on different projects. It’s a different animal in a way.”
MacLachlan joked: “I’m trying to catch up. I’m doing my best.”
MacLachlan was appearing at Canneseries to win the Canal+ Icon Award, while his Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan-created Amazon series Fallout screens tonight out of competition.
The Emmy nominee has had a decorated career, mostly via his work with David Lynch that has included his iconic role as Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks, while he has also featured in the likes of Sex and the City, How I Met Your Mother and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Back in his early career, his naïveté extended to his film-to-TV switch to Twin Peaks, he explained.
“There was definitely a stigma attached to TV and I was moving from a potential movie career,” he added. “I had trepidations and questioned whether I was old enough to do it and worried what the perception was going to be. But it turned out I didn’t need to worry.”
MacLachlan added of the show that made his name: “[The cast] all recognized how weird Twin Peaks was. We didn’t think it would get past ‘one and done’ and thought it might become a movie of the week but said that we had to be part of it because it is David Lynch.”
No “crazy reboot”
Twin Peaks aired in the early 1990s and returned in 2017 but MacLachlan poured cold water on the idea of another “crazy reboot” featuring younger stars.
“I don’t think I’d want to see that and I don’t think anyone should attempt it,” he said, observing that too many shows and movies today are remade. “You are like, ‘Don’t touch that,’ but they do, they can’t help but put their hand on the stove again. That is the problem.”
He was speaking at Canneseries a few hours before the Fallout premiere. Based on the popular video game, the show stars Yellowjackets’ Ella Purnell – another Canneseries award winner – in the aftermath of an apocalyptic nuclear exchange in an alternate history of Earth.
Canneseries runs concurrent with Mip TV in Cannes until Wednesday. Other big names set to hit the Croisette include Michael Douglas for Apple TV+’s Franklin and Daniel Brühl for Disney+’s Becoming Karl Lagerfeld.