eBar.com – by David Lamble
Back in the primordial ooze of his early acting career, eons before Agent Mulder, David Duchovny found himself auditioning to play a transvestite drug agent on Twin Peaks, a surreal nighttime soap opera hatched from the febrile brains of David Lynch and Mark Frost. This was HBO-style TV before HBO, and in theory, no character or story arc was too absurd not to be pursued for an episode or two.
The actor James Spader had proposed the crossdressing lawman to Frost, but was busy on another project when it came time to don the dress. Duchovny says he read for the part on a Friday. “By Wednesday, I was Nairing my legs and trying on dresses, it was fast! And I realized ? it was like my third job, and I’m going to be on national television in a dress! I better start working. I don’t know what I’m doing!’ At some point, I just made the decision to play it straight, not wink, and not be overly masculine or feminine. In the script, the character says, ‘I just like wearing the clothes.’ That was a good lesson I taught myself.