When Twin Peaks first aired in 1990, it was like a dream you couldn’t shake. Nothing about it was quite what it seemed – not the small town community, not the owls, and certainly not Bobby Briggs. The archetypal David Lynch high school quarterback bad boy – a perfect counter to Kyle MacLachlan’s preppy Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet – Bobby was the perma-snarl, slick-haired, sharp-tongued, chip-on-his-shoulder punk.

But behind the bad-boy bravado was a teenager caught in the surreal crosswinds of grief, guilt, and otherworldly forces far beyond his control. Embodied by a young Dana Ashbrook, the US actor gave Bobby his bite – and his fragility. Wild, magnetic, and always on the verge of unravelling, Bobby became a symbol for the menace/beauty of Twin Peaks. And then 25 years later, in Lynch’s incredible Twin Peaks: The Return, Bobby returned to our screens in a moment of redemption and triumph, as a changed man: a father, an upstanding deputy, and an ally of the Bookhouse Boys.

Now, over three decades later, we sit down with Ashbrook to look back across the Twin Peaks lore. At how Bobby became the antihero for a generation, the genius of David Lynch, and how the stories and shadows of Twin Peaks continue to radiate.

Alex James Taylor:  Hey, Dana.
Dana Ashbrook: Hi, Alex

AJT: How have these past few years been for you? Obviously with David’s sad passing, but also the resurgence of interest in Twin Peaks. How has it been revisiting it all?
DA: You know, it’s interesting doing interviews for something that… parts of it are almost 40 years old. So it’s a little strange sometimes, but it’s great. On a personal note, the David stuff is a totally different thing, but the fact that Twin Peaks is even still around is amazing to me. How lucky are we? So it’s exciting, it’s fun, it’s strange – it’s very strange.

AJT: I remember discovering Twin Peaks when I was about seventeen or so, and now see the newer generations doing the same – it’s great to see the show being passed on, and evolving across generations.
DA: Yeah. I mean, I see people at Twin Peaks events and stuff like that, fans who are there with their parents, and even in some cases their grandkids. A lot of people watched it when they were at very impressionable ages, so it was probably pretty scary. You know, it’s kind of a scary show. 

AJT: What was the reaction like when the show first came out?
DA: Back then there was, you know, maybe four networks in the US. Twin Peaks was totally different to other network television stuff, the way it looked, the music, everything about it was totally different. If you look at other shows that were around – everything looked like Dallas, every corner of every room is lit, everybody’s make-up, hair, everything. Twin Peaks was such a cinematic departure. We didn’t know it at the time, but in hindsight, it was a shift towards the way television looks now. I do hope every new generation finds the show and, I hope it’s not too slow for them – everything’s so fast now – hopefully people can get into the vibe of it. You can settle into it and escape into that world, you know?

AJT: Absolutely. Do you remember first meeting David and going on the Twin Peaks set?
DA: I first met David through Johanna Ray, who was the casting director, and I’d known her from other projects before that. David looked through a stack of her pictures of actors and he picked mine to come and meet. So I went in to meet him and Mark Frost and it was just a meeting. We just sat around and talked about theatre – I was starting a theatre company with some friends at that time – I was literally painting the facade of the theatre the day I came in for the meeting, and then I was going back to it. So I was just talking about that. I did mention some of the pilot scenes that I thought were funny. I was like, “The lady with the patch and the silent drape runners and all that. Wow. It’s crazy.” And they laughed, they thought it was funny that I pointed that out.

Then I had a work session with David another day and we read a lot of the Bobby and Shelley stuff. Then the next thing was the network test, which in those days was a big deal and you would usually have like three or four other people for your part and you’d sign the contracts and everything before you go in for the final audition. But in this case, they only had one person for each part. It was just me, and there was Lara Flynn Boyle, Ray Wise was there, and Richard Beymer. It was really relaxed. David wasn’t even there, he’d already signed off on all of us. Since then, I’ve auditioned for thousands and thousands of pilots and – it’s a grind. Twin Peaks was actually one of the easier shows I ever got.

“[Twin Peaks] was a shift towards the way television looks now.”

AJT: Do you feel that for David it was as much about your own personality as fitting the character?
DA: Absolutely. I remember during the meeting with him and Mark, he was like, “You know, Bobby, doesn’t smile a lot. He’s not a real smiley guy.” Because I’m kind of animated. And he told me that I had to hit the gym because I was a football player. It was just a really friendly, fun atmosphere. It wasn’t nerve-wracking at all.

AJT: Bobby has real contrasts in his character, he’s this bad boy bully, but also very loveable at times and very sensitive.  There are so many different sides to him.
DA: He cries all the time. [both laugh] He’s very emotional, Bobby.

AJT: And also his relationship with Shelley, it really is sweet at times.
Dana: Yeah, she’s great. Some of my favourite scenes were with Mädchen [Amick, Shelly Johnson]. It was always super easy to work with her. And, you know, we’ve carried on our friendship all these years. I’m friends with her husband and our kids are too. That relationship has always stayed. I remember from the first day I met her at Mark Frost’s house that he’d rented in Seattle when we were up there shooting. We had a dinner with a few people before I knew anybody, and Mädchen was there with her husband. We all became friends from there and stayed [close].

Alex: Those scenes with you two and Leo when he’s in the wheelchair spring to mind – so good!
Dana: Yeah, the birthday scene. That was directed by Lesli Linka Glatter, who became pretty famous. She ended up being the president of the DGA [Directors Guild of America Awards]. But at that point, she was a brand new director that everybody loved and they were bringing her up. I think she directed three episodes of Twin Peaks.

AJT: I was going to ask you about the different directors during the filming process – did it change much between them and David? Because visually, it’s pretty steady throughout.
DA: Yeah. The speed at which we shot always changed when David wasn’t directing an episode, because when he came in, everything slowed way down, which was great. But when other directors came in – it was funny because it wasn’t like we had classic TV directors who were used to like, “OK, let’s get eight, nine, ten pages done a day.” The people he brought in, Diane Keaton, Tina Rathborne, James Foley, Caleb Deschanel, like, Caleb is an Academy Award-winning cinematographer. He would come in and try other stuff. But you know, they were under the gun of, more than David, we had a director of photography who was there all the time, Frank Byers. So that’s why it probably stayed looking consistent, and the production coordinator and everyone. They built the amazing sets that we had up in Seattle and in LA.

AJT: Going back to Bobby’s relationships, we have to speak about his dad, Major Briggs. What was your relationship with Don Davis [Major Briggs]?
DA: He was a great, great man. Such a smart guy. He was a Northern Pacific Northwest guy and taught acting up in Seattle. He was also an artist who did pointillism, I have one of his pieces in my other room. And I also love Charlotte [Stewart, who played Bobby’s mother Betty]. Charlotte’s my TV mom – she will always be, and we’re close still. I love the people that they cast. Don was a great actor. That scene in the diner between us where he tells me about the dream he had, the fun fact about that David shot Don’s coverage of that speech first, and then when they turned around to shoot my coverage reacting to him, it wasn’t impacting me the way that it really should have been. And David, instead of taking me aside and giving me direction, he took Don aside, who wasn’t even on camera, and said something to him. I don’t know what he said. And then Don came back and when he was reading the story to me this time, while it was on my coverage, he started to weep and cry as he was telling me about the dream. That got me, and it made me begin to cry. So really it was Don that did all the heavy lifting. I was lucky to be in that scene. It’s one of my favourites, it really is. And I barely say anything.

AJT: I think it’s where the show shifts a little as well. It marks a change in the atmosphere. When they cast you as Bobby, were there any references that they gave you, any ideas of how to play Bobby or characters from other films?
DA: No, nothing like that. I mean, it probably would have fallen on deaf ears anyway. I knew movies, but not like I know movies now. You know, Terms of Endearment was my favourite movie when I was 21 years old. [laughs] I still love that movie, but I have a much broader view of filmmaking. David never works like that anyway. It’s all specific to the  script.

AJT: Well, you nailed it. Bobby is the archetypal bad boy of that generation. He’s the Twin Peaks James Dean.
DA: Honestly, everything I ever did that was cool was written by those guys.

AJT: Bobby and Mike Nelson barking at James in the jail cell is another very memorable scene.
DA: That was actually something that I’d experienced in high school basketball games. We would do this thing where we would all go [makes barking noise], it was stupid kid stuff. But that was where that sort of derived from. And then David tweaked it so it became more insane. And Bobby’s leather jacket with the ’T’ athletic letter sewn on the back was inspired by a guy from when I was in high school. There was a cat that everyone called Tiny, but he was huge, and he played football for one of the other schools in my district. At parties all the different schools would turn up and I remember Tiny showing up wearing a leather motorcycle jacket with his high school football letter sewn on the back. I was like, “Oh my God, that guy’s cool.” We talked about having a letterman’s jacket for a long time and then it switched to the leather jacket with a letter on the back at the last minute.

“I found out the same way everyone did, when [David] tweeted ‘That gum you like is going to come back in style!’”

AJT: And then 25 years later, we got Twin Peaks: The Return. Talk to me about how that happened. Did David call you up?
DA: I think I found out the same way everyone did, when he tweeted ‘That gum you like is going to come back in style!’ That set off a telephone frenzy amongst all our Twin Peaks people. Mädchen always knows more than everyone, so I’d always try to get to Mädchen. [laughs] She was like, “Yeah, I think it’s happening.” Then there was a lot of speculation, a lot of build-up. It was on, it was off, it was on, it was off. Money issues were going on, so it was a lot of back and forth. And then we did that video saying, “Twin Peaks without David Lynch is…”, all specific to our characters. I spoke to David and I was like, “Are you really going to do this?” And he said, “It’s really happening. If I can get the money, we’re going to do it.” We were holding our breath and hoping.

AJT: And Bobby played a major role in the comeback. He had this amazing sort of redemption arc: he became a good guy. What was it like coming back and playing the new Bobby?
DA: There was a lot of speculation up to that point of like, what the hell happened to Bobby? I didn’t know if I was going to even be in it for more than one episode. I was living in New York at the time, and Mädchen called me as she had just read her sides. She gave me a couple of clues, I remember she said, “We’re co-parenting a daughter and you’re a cop.” And I was like, “What!?” [laughs]

Alex: One of the best things about Twin Peaks is the community around it – the lore and the theories
Dana: Oh yeah. We’ll be up on stage at a symposium, or whatever, answering questions and the audience knows way more than we do about the show. They have all these theories they’re always testing out. I’m like, “Really? Wow. That never occurred to me.” But that was David’s thing, he didn’t want us to over-analyse it and break it down for people – just let it be what it is. That’s the way he operated. He didn’t want to spoon-feed; you want to leave people room to ruminate, speculate and experience it, instead of being banged over the head with how you’re supposed to feel. It’s just raw. You hear Laura Palmer’s mom screaming her grief on the phone in the pilot, and then there’s that slow pan down the telephone cord. Then she screams again at the very end of the shot and it’s like almost comical, right? It’s funny, but it’s so awful. It’s an amazing thing to be able to convey both those things at the same time. I always liked that about David’s work, because it makes me laugh. I don’t always know if I’m supposed to, but I find a lot of stuff really funny.

AJT: Oh yeah, there are so many moments. Pete’s line about the fish in the percolator always makes me laugh.
DA: Yeah. Jack [Nance], man. I think Jen Lynch had Jack going “She’s dead wrapped in plastic!” as the sound when she logged into her computer. [both laugh]

AJT: Did David and Mark’s approach change much from the original series to The Return, or was it like you never left?
Dana: It was like we’d never left. The stuff they were doing on the new one, you know, they had more money and better toys to play with. So in that sense, it was different. But honestly, when we showed up on the set, it was same old. A lot of the crew members had come back, so seeing a lot of those people for the first time again was really fun. Everyone came back because of David, everyone loved him. He knew everyone’s name on the set. He was sweet and funny.

AJT: I was in LA just before he passed away and went to Bob’s Big Boy Diner to have his signature chocolate milkshake – I didn’t quite realise how much you get! [both laugh]. I love that he went there at the same time every day for years and ordered the same drink.
DA: Yeah, Bob’s is great. I remember seeing David at a diner back in the day when I didn’t know who he was. We were at Du-pars in the valley and he was there with Isabella Rossellini and someone else. I was at a table with like five friends and there was an intake vent on the roof above our table, so it would suck air from the room. We would take the little sweetener and sugar packets, flip them up in the air and they would go up the vent. It was like magic. [laughs] We were doing that and David saw and was laughing at us doing it. Some of my friends knew who he was and were like, “That’s David Lynch… Blue Velvet.” And then after I’d met him on Twin Peaks, we were sitting around on set or whatever and I say, “Hey, man, do you remember this? At Du-pars there was a group of fucking idiots sitting at the table and throwing sugar packets and you laughed and pointed?” And he goes, “Yeah!” He totally remembered it!

Twin Peaks seasons 1 & 2 is now streaming on Mubi.