Kyle MacLachlan: Alfonso Cuarón Reinvigorated My Love of Acting After a Career ‘Lull’

Samantha Bergeson

Alfonso Cuarón inspired Kyle MacLachlan to believe in his own career again.

The Oscar-winning director helmed the short-lived 2014 NBC series “Believe” alongside J.J. Abrams, in which “Twin Peaks” alum MacLachlan played a supernatural villain. While NBC only aired 12 out of the 13 episodes, MacLachlan credited “Roma” auteur Cuarón with re-inspiring his love of acting.

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“I kind of had a lull in my career I guess. I hadn’t really worked with anyone of this caliber, and I just had a couple days on the series but something washed over me, this remembrance,” MacLachlan mused during the Criterion Collection Closet Picks series. “I said, ‘This reminds me of [David] Lynch. This reminds me of [John] Frankenheimer, this reminds me of the great directors that I’ve worked with.’ And I kind of lost that feeling somehow.”

MacLachlan continued on Cuarón, “He gave it back to me. I’ll forever be grateful for that.”

“Believe” was Cuarón’s first TV series, and marked MacLachlan’s return to the small screen after starring in David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” and “Sex and the City,” among other shows.

Cuarón previously gushed to IndieWire that “Twin Peaks: The Return” was an inspirational, “bold” series.

“You have this filmmaker who’s not constraining his narrative,” Cuarón said of series creator Lynch. “He’s just creating his world, and that world is not only story — it’s also his atmosphere, his cinematic approach. I love it. I love the ambiguity of it, the spookiness of it. I think it’s like wading through the subconsciousness of a very, very wacky mind.”

Cuarón added, “Television offers an amazing opportunity for narratives, and character. Studios are completely afraid of those things. They’re somehow afraid they’re going to scare people away from the theaters or distract people from the visual effects.”

During the Criterion visit, MacLachlan reflected on his decades-long collaboration with Lynch, starting with 1984 sci-fi film “Dune.”

“‘Dune’ didn’t really turn out that well,” MacLachlan admitted. “In fact, after that, I kind of felt like a pariah in business. No work, no nothing.”

Yet his next project with Lynch, 1986’s “Blue Velvet,” proved to be a turning point for MacLachlan’s career.

“‘Blue Velvet’ was kind of a rebirth for me,” he shared. “As traumatic as ‘Dune’ was for [Lynch], ‘Blue Velvet’ was a whole different reality. We were in our element. And that’s the point: We did ‘Dune’ together, and he easily could have said, ‘Well that Kyle, he didn’t really help the movie and so I’m going to find someone else.’ He didn’t do that. He wanted me. And I will be forever grateful. Thanks, David.”

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