He just talked to me and put me at ease and told me about being wrapped in plastic, put in freezing cold water and painted grey. I went and met him and Mark Frost and I was very intimidated, but he was so kind and warm.
Sheryl Lee: I was living in Seattle studying theater, and I got a call from my agent that David Lynch was in town shooting something for TV - it was very mysterious - and there was a role of a dead girl that he wanted to meet me about. “For me, it was wonderful because I got to learn like a sponge, just soaking it all up.” “I didn’t have any film or television experience prior to that,” the actress tells us. They needn’t have worried: The show was an instant smash hit, an experience that Frost now compares to a “Roman candle going off.” Audiences couldn’t get enough of the titular Pacific Northwest town and the tragic mystery at its center: Who killed Laura Palmer? Sheryl Lee played the show’s victim whose short life and violent death is the beating heart of Twin Peaks. At that point, ABC was a distant third place in the ratings, so they didn’t really have anything to lose and the naysayers were quietly told to shut up.”Įven with test audience approval and critical raves, the network still had no idea how Twin Peaks was going to be received by the public at large when it premiered on April 8, 1990. But it blew away their expectations, and Bob recognized we had something different. “If that hadn't happened, there's probably no way they would have ever proceeded with putting it on the air. “They got such a good response to the pilot that they didn’t anticipate,” Frost recalls. We'll be the shame of the television industry.’”īut then something happened that surprised ABC’s top brass, including a young Bob Iger, still years away from his legendary tenure at the Walt Disney Company: Test audiences loved it. “I know there were a couple people who were saying, ‘This is will kill us. “They were utterly baffled,” Frost tells Yahoo Entertainment now.
When David Lynch and Mark Frost delivered the pilot for their groundbreaking TV series to ABC three decades ago, the network executives were collectively confounded. Twin Peaks wasn’t supposed to last one year. (Photo: Spelling Entertainment/courtesy Everett Collection) Sheryl Lee, who played the show’s central victim, and Mark Frost, who co-created the surreal mystery series with David Lynch, revisit the classic show, from casting to unlikely success to The Return. Sheryl Lee as Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.