Twin Peaks stars explore its enormous influence on its 30th anniversary

Twin Peaks premiered 30 years ago on ABC. At the time, no one knew quite what to make of the moody show about a girl, Laura Palmer, murdered in a small northwestern town, but they sure were interested. The series, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, became a ratings smash, and even though it only lasted two seasons, its influence spread far and wide. If you don’t have Twin Peaks, you don’t have The X-Files, which means you don’t have LOST, which means you don’t have Game of Thrones. Without this weird, dark, strange show proving that television could be challenging and different, we might not have ever gotten our current era of peak TV.

Looking back, lots of cast and crew members are remembering the show, and musing on its influence. “David Chase (the guy behind The Sopranos) refers to Twin Peaks a lot in how it influenced him,” Dana Ashbrook (Bobby Briggs) told Syfy Wire. “And so many shows that I loved, like Lost. Lindelof is a huge Twin Peaks guy. Sam Esmail (Mr. Robot) was a huge Twin Peaks guy.”

"I always go back to the comparison of what was on television at the time that Twin Peaks came out. If you compared the way that [TV] looked, just cinematically, the other shows were just flat. Every corner of every room was lit, and everybody was lit with movie star lighting. David and Mark showed that you [could] make a movie every week and have high-quality lighting and music and all this incredible stuff that David brought to it from the film world."

Think about that in comparison to a show like Game of Thrones, which had infamously dark photography. That show may have gone overboard sometimes, but it was only able to experiment with tones like that because Twin Peaks paved the way.

Michael Horse, who played Deputy Hawk, went even further. “I mean, everything on television that’s any good has Twin Peaks’ DNA all over it,” he said. “And they don’t even pretend that they’re not. Legion gives nods to David. And when we were filming down in LA, people would come by, directors and writers, and go, ‘Look, we don’t want to disturb . We just want to shake his hand.’”

Oh yeah, do you remember when Twin Peaks got a third season 25 years after it ended? That aired on Showtime in 2017, and was just as odd as ever. “People asked me for years, ‘Is it gonna come back?’ And I actually never thought it would come back,” Horse said. “And part of me said it shouldn’t. Part of me the mystique had died. I thought it had this James Dean/Elvis quality; they all died in their prime.”

But return the show did, and pretty much every one of the cast members came back with it.“It was just such an honor,” Horse said. “People talk about, ‘Is David a genius?’ I don’t know about genius, but is David an artist? Oh, yeah. Everybody likes to make money, but that’s not why David does it.”

Writer/producer Harley Peyton further traced the Twin Peaks effect for us: “Down the years, seeing the ripple effect, even in something like Devs, which I’m watching and loving on Hulu, it’s understanding that that’s part of that Twin Peaks lineage,” he said.

"It was such a fluke, and the odds of that happening the next year were zero…I’m still amazed. And ABC deserves a ton of credit. First of all, they were in third place [in broadcast ratings], so I guess they had nothing to lose. No one gave us notes. The network basically just said, ‘Okay, good luck.’ Everyone had the freedom they wanted to do the things they could do.And to think, in the three-network universe, this insane show was suddenly on the air and everybody’s talking about, ‘Who killed Laura Palmer?’…I mean, it’s just amazing to me. But the fact of the matter is that it was so different that you had a feeling that it was gonna change everything, or change nothing. And in a funny way, it did both."

That sounds like paradox-speak worthy of a Twin Peaks writer, doesn’t it?

Now, there was supposed to be a Twin Peaks 30th anniversary gathering in Graceland, Tennessee at the beginning of April, but with the coronavirus still at large, it was moved back to October. Still, stars Kyle MacLachlan (Dale Cooper) and Mädchen Amick (Shelly Johnson) made things easier by hosting a watch party of the pilot episode on Twitter, with lots of damn good coffee to wash everything down.

They also answered a slew of fan questions, some serious, and some very much not.

Oh, this finger bit always creeped me out:

The stars also paid tribute to Peggy Lipton (Norma) and Catherine Coulson (the Log Lady) both of whom passed not long ago:

It was a terrific live watch. What else is there to say except…

With a series as unpredictable as Twin Peaks, it’s impossible to say whether there’s more to come, for the fans or the cast. “I used to always just say never, never, never,” recalled Ashbrook. “And then, it came back. So I have no idea. I think if it did come back it would have to be in some sort of smaller capacity. I don’t know if anyone has 18 episodes in them anymore. But I hope. I would love to come back. Who wouldn’t? But who knows, man? Who knows?”

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h/t Syfy Wire