Joan Chen Regrets ‘Twin Peaks’ Exit That Ultimately Kept Her Out of Season 3

Any “Twin Peaks” fan worth their garmonbozia won’t forget the tragic fate of Josie Packard. In the Lesli Linka Glatter-directed Episode 16 of Season 2, the Packard Sawmill owner (Joan Chen) dies suddenly after a standoff with FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), her soul appearing to then live inside a wooden drawer knob in a room at the Great Northern hotel.

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It’s an unforgettable image, but a bit of a sad, anticlimactic one for Chen, who at that point wanted to be written out of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s show to pursue other opportunities. (And as many “Twin Peaks” fans know, this was a crossroads where the series was becoming aimless, before Lynch tied it all back together with his return to direct the outstanding Season 2 finale.)

The Hollywood Reporter revealed in 2017 how Chen appealed to David Lynch with a letter, asking for Josie Packard to be brought back into the series for Showtime’s “The Return,” or Season 3 of “Twin Peaks.”

“Obviously, it didn’t work out,” Chen told IndieWire during a recent interview discussing her new Sundance winner “Dìdi” (Focus Features, July 26), in which she plays a Taiwanese immigrant mother to a middle-school son going through puberty.

According to “Twin Peaks” lore, early drafts of the script for the prequel movie “Fire Walk with Me” suggested Josie might be the sister of Judy, an evil, body-less entity that becomes the terrorizing force of “The Return.” But that doesn’t play out in “The Return,” and Josie’s character is only shown through archival flashback footage toward the end of the series. And that’s despite most of the core cast returning.

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“When I heard that they were going to make ‘Twin Peaks’ again, of course, I wanted to go back, and I regret it very much,” she said. “During the shooting of ‘Twin Peaks,’ I wanted to leave the show because I wanted to do a film called ‘Turtle Beach.’ And I loved the novel of ‘Turtle Beach,’ talking about Vietnamese and Chinese refugees’ life. And there was a character I really wanted to play. And also I sort of preferred the big screen back then. I don’t know why, but I felt like I wanted to leave the show.” (The Australian movie “Turtle Beach” became a critical and commercial bomb in 1992.)

“Finally, they wrote me out and put me in a drawer knob, and later on I was regretful because ‘Turtle Beach’ came out to be a very uninspired film. Now even decades later, ‘Twin Peaks’ is this iconic TV show that opened a new possibility to make TV shows. It was a revolutionary show, and because of that regret, I was like, ‘Oh, I could just go back. I want to go back.’ I wanted to write a letter to David to sort of kindle him some imagination and possibility, but obviously, it didn’t work.”

Lynch may or may not be done with “Twin Peaks” — right now, he’s focusing on directing music videos for “The Return” star Chrystabell — but Chen said she would still return if it made sense.

“If she could get out of the drawer knob and serve some purpose for the show, then I would love it,” she said, adding that she did watch the third season. “I knew there was no place for Josie in there.”