‘We were crucified’: Kyle MacLachlan reflects on 1984 Dune

When Kyle MacLachlan made his film debut in David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of Dune, he didn’t really consider what might happen if the film bombed. He was a young theatre actor who felt lucky and excited to be plucked out of obscurity. Unfortunately, Lynch’s Dune was a critical and commercial disappointment.

“We were crucified,” MacLachlan tells Q‘s Tom Power in an interview. “It was challenging, but I was naive, I think. I was young, I had gone through training and I was like, well, if this doesn’t work, I’ll just go back to the theatre and go the direction I was going in before I did Dune, which was to go to New York and pursue that career.”

Despite its less-than-warm reception, MacLachlan still looks back on the film as an overall positive experience. “I really loved working on Dune because it was beyond anything I could have imagined,” he says. “[I was] working with these extraordinary actors that I’d seen on screen before, but never met.”

WATCH | Kyle MacLachlan’s interview with Tom Power:

But now that Denis Villeneuve’s sweeping adaptation of Dune has become a massive success, people are naturally wondering what MacLachlan thinks of it and how he compares the two versions.

He says he was curious to see the new Dune — particularly how its star, Timothée Chalamet, would handle the challenges of playing his character, Paul Atreides — but at the time of recording this interview, he hadn’t seen Dune: Part Two yet.

My fear going in was that … I was going to be like, ‘Oh, our Dune? Yeah, you can throw that on the trash heap.’– Kyle MacLachlan

“I saw the first one with Timothée and I enjoyed it,” MacLachlan tells Power. “I love the story so much. It’s such a great journey. My fear going in was that I was going to see the new Dune and I was going to be like, ‘Oh, our Dune? Yeah, you can throw that on the trash heap.’ And I didn’t have that reaction. I said, ‘No, no, there’s room for both of these to exist.’

“The story is so difficult to tell. It’s so complex. Everything within that book is linked. So if you don’t tell two or three aspects of the story, it weakens the story. You almost need everything in there to really understand it. David obviously concentrated on the parts of the book that he responded to, that he really enjoyed … and that is going to change the texture of that movie.”

So how did MacLachlan deal with people watching his reaction in the theatre?

“Well, I wore my stillsuit,” he jokes, “because I didn’t know how long the movie was going to be just in case I needed to, you know, take care of things.”

The full interview with Kyle MacLachlan is available on our YouTube channel or on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. He also talks about his new series Fallout, and what it was like working with Lynch on Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Kyle MacLachlan produced by Mitch Pollock.