Subject: Leland Speaks! An interview with Ray Wise From: carol@pilot.njin.net (Steve Carol) Date: 1990-12-14, 19:36 Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks Leland Speaks! If you have yet to catch Fresh Air on National Public Radio, make the effort to find it. It is one of the best interview shows anywhere, anytime. Produced in Philadelphia at WHYY, the show is hosted by Terry Gross, a bright, articulate, broadly educated woman who holds her own against film makers, actors, musicians, writers, even writers calling her from the Federal Pen. Dont miss it!. I say that 99% because its true, and only 1% because it may work in my favor if the copyright police call me about what follows. Anyway, on 12/12 Terry talked with Ray Wise. ------------------ [Terry Gross says] [This interview is dedicated to television critic David Biancouli (sp?) ] who seldom lets a week go by without mentioning Twin Peaks on our show. [audio from TP, Cooper says] Did you kill Laura Palmer? [Leland howls repeatedly, and says] Thats a yes. [Terry Gross] It was two Saturdays ago that Leland Palmer confessed to killing his daughter, Laura Palmer. Right after the confession, the evil spirit Bob left Leland's body, and Leland died -- which means the actor who played him, Ray Wise, is out of the series. The perfect time we thought, to ask Ray Wise what it was like to star on Twin Peaks. Since the premier of Twin Peaks the characters in the series, and the TV viewers who watched it, had asked the same question: Who killed Laura Palmer? I asked Ray Wise when he found out. [Ray Wise] I found out the [morning] after the Emmy Awards this last summer, and Mark Frost and David Lynch called me up to their office -- actually called Ben Horn (Richard Bemer) and myself, and Sheryl Lee, who played Laura and who played Maddie Ferguson, up to the office -- and we went into a small room that was devoid of furniture. It was very dark [Terry Gross begins to laugh] This is true - with a kind of lava lamp [she really laughs] in the corner - a lava lamp waterfall, as I recall; and David was sitting on the floor cross-legged, and so was Mark, and so was Sheryl Lee, and Richard and I came in and we sat down, cross-legged, and David leaned over and put his hand on my knee, and he said "It was you". [TG laughs] "It was always you, from day one it was you". And I sort of bowed my head and curled up into a fetal position and said -- I really can't say the word that I said at the time -- but it was "Oh, shoot!" [TG] Why were you upset? [RW] I didn't want it to be me, you know? I really - I -I grew to love Leland Palmer and his strange ways, and I didn't want it to be him. Oh, it's like having a close friend turn out to be a killer, and go to prison, and all that sort of thing. I just didn't want it to be Leland. I wanted Leland to go on and on [he chuckles]. [TG] Did it ease the pain though, knowing that in a way he was innocent, 'cause after all he was possessed, it wasn't his own motivation that killed Laura Palmer. [RW] Absolutely. Mark went on to explain my last show, and the meaning of the last show. And they also filled me in on some of the background that I hadn't been aware of, that Bob had been inside me for the last four or five years. Leland is a true innocent in a sense because he was totally possessed by this evil spirit Bob, and yeah, when they told me that it really took the edge off it for me. I was able to accept it a lot better after that. [TG] Did the writers know right from the start that you did it? You know, that Leland Palmer was the vehicle... [RW] Oh yeah, Mark and David, they promised me that they did [he doesn't sound completely sure...] they knew it from the start. I don't think they knew quite how they were going to arrive at that point, but I think that they knew who they wanted it to be. And it was me. I was the sacrificial lamb. [TG] Let's talk about that last scene -- the death scene -- after you confess, and then, you know, you're, you're [she approaches the word with some embarrassment] you're barking [she laughs]. Was that --whos idea was it for you to bark? [RW] That's me, that's all me. Tim Hunter directed that episode and Tim did a wonderful job, but I had all these things sorta planned out in my head, the way I wanted to approach it anyway. The times when I was possessed by Bob I wanted to exhibit certain things, and then when I became Leland again I wanted to show certain things. The bark just sort of, uh, came out -- very feral thing, very wolf-like, very animal-like, and very vicious, and it just seemed to fit with the woods motif. [They both laugh] You know, the wolf in the woods, that kind of thing. So, I did it anyway. [TG] So you've known the secret to who killed Laura Palmer since the summer. Were you like pledged to secrecy, and were you protected from the public in any way so that no one would find out... [RW] Oh yeah, yeah, they made us do everything except sign a paper. They stamped numbers on all of our scripts so that if one of our scripts fell into foreign hands they would know the party responsible for losing it. I mean it sounds funny, but it was true, that they tried to impose maximum security on the set, so that no one would know and so there wouldn't be any leaks. And they even tried to fool the crew some times, you know, they would have us do certain scenes with a couple of different actors. And they would film it, actually waste money, and waste film to shoot superfluous footage just so that people wouldn't know who the real killer was. [TG] What were some of the ways people tried to get you to reveal who killed Laura Palmer? [RW] Well they just start talking to me, you know, they just start talking to me and asking me supposedly harmless questions -- and it's wonderful to be able to talk to you right now with this load off my chest [she laughs]. I don't have anything to protect [he begins to laugh] I don't have anything to protect any more. I can be pretty truthful, and it's great to feel that way. But people would just start out asking me little questions, seemingly harmless ones, and then try to lead into the big one and try to slip it in by me without my knowing it. But I always clamp down on it and say, "Look, I'm sorry, I can't answer that". [TG] When you first started to work on Twin Peaks, what kind of overall description and what kind of character description did David Lynch give you? [RW] Well you know, when I first came in on Twin Peaks it was originally for the role of Sheriff Truman. [Oh..., says TG, somewhat surprised] [And] David and Mark were seeing me for that role. And then we talked for about -- our first meeting we talked for about twenty or twenty-five minutes, about just life in general and the first cars that we owned -- I think David's was a Volkswagon, and mine was a little 1960 Alpha Romeo convertible that was in pretty good shape, and anyway, we talked about our cars and a couple of people that we had in common, and that was the extent of the interview. They called me back a few days later, and my agent said "Ray, you know, they're interested in you for the part of Leland Palmer". And I said "Wait a minute, Leland Palmer? Who's he?" So I opened up the script and I quickly rifled through the pages, and "Ah, yes, there's Leland Palmer right here... ah ha... he hears that his daughter's been murdered... ok... he cries here... dit, dit, dit, dit... ah, he goes to the hospital to identify his daughter's body and he breaks down and cries here..." and I thought "Oh my, this guy... is spending a lot of time crying! He's a lot of time with grief". And that was my introduction to Leland Palmer, I had to quickly look him up in the script. And then several days later we were all chosen for our various parts, and we flew up to Seattle about a week later to begin the pilot, and I thought Leland was a pretty normal, straight-forward, simple kind of a guy, who was a pretty good lawyer in town, reasonably intelligent, reasonably articulate, who was well liked, and unfortunately had a young daughter who was murdered. That's what I thought he was in the beginning. ---------------- I'm going to take a break and post this first part. I'm not transcribing this as fast as I thought I could. Let me know if anyone's interested in seeing more. -- Steve Steve Carol Atlantic Community College Mays Landing, NJ 08330 Carol@Pilot.NJIN.Net