‘Twin Peaks’ Star Sherilyn Fenn on Work and Friendship With David Lynch (Exclusive)
Director David Lynch, who died on Jan. 16, 2025, at the age of 78 after a battle with emphysema, was famous for his unique, surreal approach to the art of filmmaking, both in the topics he covered and the way he approached them. And according to actress Sherilyn Fenn, who was nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her role as Audrey Horne in Twin Peaks, and reunited with Lynch for Twin Peaks: The Return as well as the 1990 film Wild at Heart, being directed by Lynch was also a totally unique experience.
At the October 2023 Hollywood Show, Fenn recalled that being directed by Lynch was “meditative. Like he knows how to go into each person’s thing. He has some kind of bizarre idea of the whole.” Lynch described his directing process to Fenn as “‘it’s like if you’re in front of the sound board, with performances of actors … turn this one up, turn this one down a little, that’s too much.’ So he always has it in his head — I call him ‘maestro,’ [he conducts actors’ performances] like ‘strong, bring that down,’ kind of thing.”
Sherilyn Fenn in Twin Peaks: The Return Suzanne Tenner/Showtime/courtesy Everett Collection
In Wild at Heart, Fenn has a brief but very memorable role as a car crash victim. “He said to me, ‘Oh my god, I wrote this scene, and there’s this big accident, and this china doll comes out from over this hill and she’s broken and bloody, and it’s YOU!,'” Fenn recalled. “I’m like, ‘Well, okay! I mean, I’ll do anything with you. I don’t want to be bloody and broken, but …’ And it was an amazingly powerful scene in Wild at Heart, of your worst nightmare — ‘there’s been an accident, oh no, there’s somebody that’s bloody’…”
Lynch’s willingness to face the dark parts of existence and examine them with sensitivity and humanity was central to his artistic philosophy, Lynn recalled: “He used to say, don’t be afraid to shine a light into the dark corners of your mind and of yourself, Sherilynn, don’t be afraid.”
Fenn’s working relationship with Lynch spanned multiple decades — after working on Twin Peaks from 1990 to 1991 and Wild at Heart in 1990, she and Lynch collaborated again on 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return. And the two kept in touch in the years between the series. “I love David,” Fenn said. “He has the best coffee at his house, he has David Lynch coffee. I bring him over sometimes homemade tomato soup, and things that he likes, for his birthday … I love him very much. He saw something in me that nobody saw at that point. And wrote me a character that changed my life.”
Though Fenn had been acting since she was 18, and was 24 when she took on the role of Twin Peaks schoolgirl Audrey Horne, working with Lynch was like nothing she had experienced before. “I think David looks for people’s souls,” she said. “I think he looks in their eyes and tries to see who’s in there. It’s not about what you look like, or this or that. He used to be like, “You’re like a girl with secrets, like Audrey.’ When he directs you, he just goes right into your world with it.”
TV Insider