Kyle MacLachlan calls himself David Lynch's 'submersible' into dark places

Kyle MacLachlan says he served as David Lynch's "submersible" into dark places. The actor, whose collaborations with Lynch include Dune, Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, made the remark while discussing his new memoir, Fictional Selves.

MacLachlan was 23 when he auditioned for Lynch's 1984 adaptation of Dune. That audition launched one of the most distinctive actor-director partnerships in American cinema. The two went on to make the cult classics Blue Velvet (1986) and Twin Peaks, the television series that redefined what network television could hold.

"Ultimately, I was the audience," MacLachlan said of his role in Lynch's work. His characters — from the young adventurer Paul Atreides to the small-town sleuth Agent Dale Cooper — functioned as the viewer's point of entry into Lynch's unsettling worlds.

The metaphor of the submersible is precise. Across their collaborations, MacLachlan's everyman presence gave audiences a vessel they could trust, allowing Lynch to descend into territory that might otherwise have been unbearable. Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet discovers rot beneath the surface of a seemingly idyllic town. Agent Cooper arrives in Twin Peaks to investigate a murder and finds a community steeped in secrets. In both cases, MacLachlan's guileless performance anchors the darkness.

Lynch died in January 2025. MacLachlan delivered a eulogy at his memorial, telling the audience that the director had shown him "what it looks like to be a good man" and recalling their decades of friendship.

Fictional Selves covers MacLachlan's career from his breakthrough with Lynch through his later work in film and television. The memoir joins a growing body of writing about Lynch by those who knew him, but MacLachlan's account carries particular weight: no other actor worked with Lynch across so many defining projects, from Dune through Twin Peaks: The Return in 2017.

MacLachlan has spoken about the loss openly in recent months. "Ultimately, I was the audience," he repeated in interviews surrounding the book, framing his role not as a star but as a surrogate for everyone watching.

For readers of Fictional Selves, the promise is a first-person record of one of cinema's strangest and most fruitful creative partnerships — told by the man Lynch trusted to carry audiences into the depths.