Kyle MacLachlan And The Fallout Team Understood Fan Concerns About The Show [Exclusive]

By now, Kyle MacLachlan knows a thing or two about intense fans. After all, he originated the role of FBI agent Dale Cooper in David Lynch's surrealist classic "Twin Peaks" when it premiered in 1990 and returned for the aptly named revival series "Twin Peaks: The Return" in 2017. Playing Hank MacLean on Prime Video's "Fallout" adaptation, he's now in a franchise that has existing fans from the video games — so how does he handle that pressure?

"I think all of us from top to bottom felt coming into this world that we wanted to honor the existing world and to recreate as best we could, the vibe and the energy and the sensibility of Fallout, of the number of different Fallouts. So there was a great attention paid to that," MacLachlan told /Film's own BJ Colangelo in a recent interview, speaking to the complexities of adapting a popular video game that contains huge tonal shifts. "It's that juxtaposition of the music with what you see on screen, with some of the characters' reactions, some of the violence of course, which is extreme, pushed up against a kind of light-hearted score. So we were all really aware of that."

Based on how much fans like the first season, MacLachlan is optimistic about the response to season 2:

"I think the response from the first season, there was of course, in the beginning, people were like, 'Oh, they better not mess it up,' and genuine concern, which I think we all understood. And then when the series started, all of that was just kind of passed and people were embracing it. All the fans embraced the show, and I think they really appreciated the effort that we put into trying to make it something that they would be pleased with."

Here's a quick refresher on Kyle MacLachlan's Hank MacLean in "Fallout." When we meet him, he's set to marry his daughter Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) off to an outsider from Vault 32. (As a reminder, after an apocalyptic event that left the surface of the Earth in a disastrous state, most civilians moved underground into various vaults — and there are a lot of vaults in the "Fallout" universe, as fans of the original game know all too well.) Unfortunately, when Lucy does find Hank, she finds out something very disturbing about his past ... and her mother.

Hank's role in the "Fallout" narrative grows considerably in season 2, and based on what MacLachlan told /Film, he's happily settling into a new creative universe and embracing its fans wholeheartedly. The difference here, of course, is that MacLachlan joined the "Fallout" universe and met the existing fandom on their collective level; with "Twin Peaks," nobody had any preconceived notions about Dale Cooper because he didn't exist before MacLachlan played him on "Twin Peaks." Whether he's playing a villain, a hero, a crappy husband on "Sex and the City," or a terribly enthusiastic boat captain on "How I Met Your Mother," MacLachlan, as a performer, has an apparent knack for settling comfortably into new roles and spaces. Even without the total freedom he was afforded on "Twin Peaks" by virtue of creating a character from whole cloth, MacLachlan seems like he's thriving in the role of Hank MacLean ... and the effort he's putting in is paying off with audiences.

Season 2 of "Fallout" drops weekly on Amazon Prime Studio on Wednesdays.