How David Lynch Prepared Kyle MacLachlan For The Fallout Universe [Exclusive]

Amazon Prime's "Fallout" adaptation is back for a second season, which means we'll see much more of Kyle MacLachlan's antagonist, Hank MacLean. So how does MacLachlan, a veteran actor who's starred in everything from "Twin Peaks" to "Sex and the City," balance the show's intense darkness with its funnier moments?

MacLachlan spoke exclusively to /Film's BJ Colangelo about the hit show's sophomore season, and unsurprisingly, the actor said that he learned how to juggle this sort of thing while working on "Twin Peaks," an incredibly disturbing show that was, simultaneously, extraordinarily funny. "I'm following the tone of the show, really, which is serious issues, topics, but dealt with in really an offbeat, absurd way," MacLachlan said. "And God knows I've cut my teeth on the absurd working with writer-director David Lynch over the years," he continued, referencing the late co-creator of "Twin Peaks" who helmed other surreal and borderline deranged projects like "Mulholland Drive" and "Eraserhead."

As MacLachlan said, his time working with his close friend Lynch on a wide variety of projects — including Lynch's "Dune" adaptation and the "Twin Peaks" revival in 2017 — gave him a unique ability to handle tonal shifts. "So I do understand what's asked for, so I lean into just the dark humor, I guess," he said before addressing Colangelo's question about creating a "fun" villain:

"There's a certain angle that I take, and I don't always know how to explain it, where there's just a funny timing, a funny look, just kind of a toss-off kind of sense that seems to work for Hank. And I found it in season 1, and it's expanded in season 2 as I've really leaned into it. So I think that's what you're picking up on."

During the interview, /Film also brought up that there's a "playfulness" to Hank MacLean that "feels very palpable," noting that Kyle MacLachlan "[seems] to be making a meal" out of his time on screen. This is a familiar thing for anyone who's a fan of MacLachlan's large body of work; whether he's declaring that he's drinking a "damn fine cup of coffee" as Dale Cooper on "Twin Peaks" or responding to a marriage proposal by saying "all righty" on "Sex and the City," MacLachlan manages to bring a delightful levity to nearly every one of his roles. "One of my favorites from this season is during your little montage where you cross by a hallway and you do this little skip jump," Colangelo noted, asking if MacLachlan was told to do that or if it was him playing around as a performer. 

"That one might've been me," MacLachlan revealed, "but they've given me some wonderful tools to work with. He finds a yo-yo early on in the first episode, I think. And we get to watch him develop his skill set on this yo-yo. So the writers have really given me really something wonderful to work with based upon that, and I can play with it."

I'll circle back to the very dark aspects of Hank momentarily, but MacLachlan put it best when discussing the character's stark contrasts. "It's just the juxtaposition of what I'm doing, which is pretty disturbing, compared with kind of how I'm physicalizing it with this yo-yo, which is a playful artifact from the past," he said.

When we first meet Hank MacLean in season 1 of "Fallout," he seems like the goofy, kindly, and loving dad of series protagonist Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) and Lucy's younger brother Norm (Moisés Arias), but their mother is conspicuously missing from the picture. Regardless, Lucy, who lives in Vault 33 with her family (in the "Fallout" world, civilians live in numbered, secured underground bunkers to avoid living in a dystopian, apocalyptic wasteland) is set to marry a Vault 32 dweller until her wedding is interrupted by a crew that, for reasons unknown to Lucy at the time, kidnap Hank and take him hostage. 

There's more to Hank than it seems, though, which is precisely why an actor as versatile and talented as Kyle MacLachlan is the perfect casting choice for this role. As Lucy goes looking for her father, she meets Lee Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury), the head of a group of raiders, and ultimately learns the truth. Years beforehand, Lucy and Norm's mom Rose fled life in the vaults with her two children, and when Hank found her in the thriving city of Shady Sands, he arranged for a nuclear bomb to level the city, turning Lucy's own mother into a post-apocalyptic ghoul. ("The Ghoul," the character played by Walton Goggins, is our main example of a nuclear ghoul at this point in the narrative.) Lucy, for her part, disowns her father ... but Hank will absolutely be back to wreak more havoc in season 2.

Season 2 of "Fallout" is airing new episodes every Wednesday on Amazon Prime Video now, and you can hear the full interview with MacLachlan on this week's episode of the /Film Weekly podcast.