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Similar to so many of his characters, Kyle MacLachlan is warm and unpretentious, brewing coffee and passing out boxed waters to the crew of strangers in his living room. He puts everyone at ease. In part, it’s what makes him such a compelling actor—and now podcaster and vinter—he possesses this eerie ability to make even awkward situations seem domestic and intimate. For decades he’s brought this magic to his roles—in the original Dune, the underbelly of suburbia Blue Velvet, and the phenomenon of Twin Peaks—and now employs it online…or in real life, when asked to stab a head of cauliflower with a butcher knife or stand beneath a shower with a glass of wine.

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Sammy Loren: How does food function in the family for you?

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Kyle MacLachlan: It's really important to have that time when we can sit and be together and talk and just catch up on the day. It's something I look forward to on busy, busy days. I know that dinner is going to be a time when we can not think about work and just enjoy ourselves.

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SL: I'm curious about this, because this is a source of much conflict in my own relationship: When you sit down to eat these meals, is it like [snaps] TV world, podcast world, wine world is over: this is now family time?

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KM: Yeah for the most part. We're a busy family, so it's not 100 percent. Sometimes my wife will be out or she'll be late or she'll be in the middle of the call and can't get to dinner. My son is either on his way to volleyball or he's coming back from volleyball after school. So there's a lot of things that work against that, but the effort and the attempt is to try to make it so that we find a common time to sit down and turn off all devices.

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SL: Do you actually turn off the devices, though?

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KM: Yeah.

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SL: Who do you think in your family is the most addicted to being on their phone, being online, or being on social media?

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KM: I think we're all addicted to a certain degree. For my son, it's really important; it’s so much about his circle of friends and the communication between them. My wife and I are pretty good, too. I appreciate how challenging it is. You know, if you start going down the rabbit hole of Instagram, or YouTube, or TikTok even, I'm like Geez, 20 minutes just went by like that. So it's really hard to get mad at my son when he gets lost in it because we all suffer from that. Once I turn it off and turn away then I'm fine, but when you're in it, it's highly addictive. I don't know if you have that same experience?

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SL: Oh, I mean, I'm a real Insta-scanner. I'm all over it. It's crazy.

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KM: It's interesting when you're like, Oh well, I'm actually learning something or Here's something I'm curious about or Here's something funny.

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SL: I don't really use TikTok that much, but I was looking through it a little bit. It really is a Gen-Z app. What do you like about the younger generation? And what do you find incomprehensible about them?

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KM: The language is pretty incomprehensible. But then we had our own phrases and slang when I was that age, too. I love the creativity. I love some of the insanity—some of it is too much for me. Everything that I've been doing recently is really geared towards promoting the podcast that I have out called Varnamtown. I love coming up with something that's eccentric and funny and a little informative. Almost all of my social activity has a humorous aspect. I'm not on there ranting and raving... I think you can get yourself into crazy places with that.

SL: I've seen so many of your movies. What's interesting about your work is that you have become a sort of shorthand for a certain type of transgressive, cultural sensibility that really crosses a lot of generations: my generation, your generation, and younger generations, too. What do you think it is about your work that attracts such a diversity of audiences?

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KM: You know, I have to say first and foremost it starts with David Lynch and my relationship with him, having done my first film with him [Dune] and then Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks. We're so identified together, and he is such an amazing artist, surrealist filmmaker, and painter. He creates music, sculpture, and furniture. His works are always challenging, and he is not like anything else. I think that appeals to many generations. He's his own person, his own creative force. I think people who find him and who get it are drawn to him for that reason—and it can happen at any age. There are people who grew up with him, and then there are people in their late teens or 20s who are still discovering Twin Peaks. I have a lot of young fans who come forward and say, "My parents showed this to me, and I'm such a fan." And then beyond that, I've done stuff every couple of decades or every decade that has been sort of in the zeitgeist. Starting with Twin Peaks, and then Sex in the City, Desperate Housewives, How I Met Your Mother... Showgirls, people love that. There are these things that have resonated with different generations, and people remember them, and then if they're interested they'll say "Oh I always saw him in that but he's also in How I Met Your Mother..." It has been really satisfying to have such a breadth of different ages aware of what I've done.

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SL: You've worked in all these really iconic roles… Which role challenged you the most as an actor, and how did that influence you and how you approach new characters?

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KM: Dune was my very first film experience ever. So that was really challenging, and there are moments that are more successful than others just based upon my knowledge of the camera and what I'm doing. Then in Blue Velvet I learned more. Each film or television program has been a process of discovery. Character-wise, the creative process for some of the Twin Peaks stuff that I did most recently was very different from anything I've done before. I played three main characters, and two of the three were really challenging but I enjoyed it. It's always a challenge. I did a crazy half-hour not too long ago with Patricia Heaton called Carol's Second Act, and that was much more challenging than I expected because it was in front of a live audience. While I'd done a lot of theater when I was a kid, I wasn't prepared for that format. I was surprised at how nervous I was. You can still be scared in this business, which I guess is good. It keeps you on your toes.

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SL: You mentioned your podcast… What has it been like to transition into the audio world? How has being an actor sort of shaped how you want to approach this totally different medium?

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KM: I was excited about it. It takes some of the pressure off when you're not seen, to be honest, when you're just really concentrating on what you're saying. Also the process for what we did, which was more of a questioning of people who were involved in the story, was really not my forte—I'm much more about digging into the psyche of a character and this was about the motivation of living people and trying to get them to tell you the story that you wanted them to tell. And that’s really the part of Josh Davis, who's an investigative reporter and my partner in this podcast. He's very good at that. So I was along for the ride, and I participated. He really drove the questioning, and I learned a lot by being there in the room.

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SL: I love how dynamic your interests are. Talk to me about winemaking: What inspired you to get into the wine industry? Do you approach it differently from these other things, or does it all come from a similar source of discovery?

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KM: It's very much a similar source of discovery. Part of the reason I got into it was to learn what it takes to make great wine. I thought it would be an adventure to do it in my home state near where I grew up, on the east side of Washington state. Yakima is my hometown, and I make the wine in Walla Walla. It was kind of a multi-pronged idea: to learn about wine, go back and do something in my home state, and spend some more time with my family. My dad was alive at the time, so I wanted to get him involved, and my brothers as well. And then I met the winemaker I started with, who became a friend, and we partnered on our first wine in 2005. At first it was just a hobby. I thought, Let's just make the wine and then see what happens, and it's been that way all along. Now, I have six wines, almost a seventh one now. I've got a tasting room in downtown Walla Walla. I have a relationship with all my growers around the state. and I'm now looking at property to have my own vineyard. My long-term goal is ultimately to have a winery but how I get there is kind of like a river, you know, it meanders. You have to enjoy the experience.

SL: Is there a particular piece of advice or experience you can point to that you had while you're on set that has stayed with you and shaped how you think about acting?

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KM: Be prepared. Come in knowing your stuff cold and come in with a real point of view about the scene.

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SL: Because you've seen when that doesn't happen?

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‍KM: I've seen it, and I've also been guilty of it. When I was working on my first Law & Order [episode] years ago, I thought the filming tempo would be similar to something else that I had done and that there would be time to prepare. That wasn't the case at all. So I had to pull on some heavy brain cells to deliver what I needed to deliver in this one scene. That was a wake-up for me. I think having a perspective coming in is really important—and then be ready to throw everything out the window and just go with the moment. More important than anything is the chemistry between the other actor and you. Are you connecting in some way that's interesting? Maybe it's not the way that you anticipated when you first started, but it’ll be interesting. Be ready, but also be ready to throw it away.

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Hair Stylist LIVIO ANGILERI.

Photo Assistant CESCA COPPOLA.

Fashion Assistant HAYLEY FRANCISE.