Minnesota's enduring influence on 'Twin Peaks,' 35 years later
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Actor Michael Horse laughs when he says he lives in “Twin Peaks.”
He’s actually lived in Two Harbors, Minn., for the last four years or so. He can see similarities between the small towns among the trees.
Horse played Deputy Hawk in the fictional television series, a mystery drama that aired in 1990 and 1991, and again in 2017.
The show built a cult following since it went off the air. And though the fictional town of Twin Peaks was set in Washington state, Minnesota had a lasting impact on the series.
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In other words, those similarities Horse sees are no coincidence.
Series co-creator Mark Frost spent 10 years in Minnesota as a teenager and young adult.
“Oddly enough, we first set the series and the very first draft that we did in North Dakota,” Frost says. “The working title was ‘Northwest Passage.’”
Frost's family lived in the Prospect Park neighborhood of Minneapolis, and Frost attended Marshall-University High School, rubbing elbows with an eclectic mix of people and cultures. Frost says he was introduced to people on every side of the tracks.
As a high schooler, he interned at the Guthrie Theater and was production assistant for founder Tyrone Guthrie's last show, “Uncle Vanya,” in 1969, an experience he calls formative.
“The place is in my heart forever,” Frost said.
Frost’s dad, Warren, appeared in Twin Peaks as small-town physician Doc Hayward, but in the Twin Cities he built a career for himself at the Chanhassen Dinner Theatre, well-known for appearances in performances like “Sleuth” and “Equus” in the 1970s and 80s.
Warren Frost also taught in the theater department at the University of Minnesota, where he influenced a great number of future actors and writers — including future “Twin Peaks” showrunner Bob Engels and actor Chris Mulkey.
In the series, Mulkey played Hank Jennings, a charismatic criminal with multiple murders under his belt.
Mulkey is a former Catholic school boy, educated at Cretin Military Academy in St. Paul. He went into the University of Minnesota as a wrestler who needed an elective and picked acting on a whim.
That first acting class at the U rekindled a sense of play he remembered from childhood.
Mulkey later worked at the Children's Theatre, then part of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and released a film, Loose Ends, deeply inspired by what he calls a colorful upbringing in St. Paul. He has appeared in hundreds of television shows and movies since then.
But he almost didn't audition for “Twin Peaks.”
“I felt vulnerable because I didn't understand David Lynch's style,” he said. “And so I said, ‘I don't think I should go … because I don't really understand where they're coming from.’”
Ultimately, the role of Hank fit him like a glove. Under that bad boy exterior, there was a sense of Midwest likability.
It's a Minnesota Nice that fit the Twin Peaks world — the way even criminals had to get along with their neighbors.
That atmosphere inspired co-creator Mark Frost, too. He'd visit friends' cabins in the North Woods.
“That informed a lot of the surface of Twin Peaks and the familiar levels of it, the quotidian part of daily life,” Frost said.
The deep woods surrounding Twin Peaks were as much of a character in the show as the deep ensemble cast. Frost's collaborator, co-creator David Lynch, grew up with a father in the U.S. Forest Service.
But while Twin Peaks’ woods are spooky, that’s not the feeling Frost got from the forests of Minnesota.
He felt a sense of darkness from his family’s lake cabin on the East Coast, and it was that feeling he wrote into the Twin Peaks universe.
Michael Horse, the actor and Two Harbors resident, says if Two Harbors has a seedy side, he hasn’t seen it.
Horse grew up in Southern California and Arizona and describes moving to New York City at 15. He and his wife, Pennie Opal Plant, are both part Yaqui, an indigenous people of Mexico. He thought they'd end up retiring there.
But Horse and Opal Plant are both longtime environmental and social justice activists. Opal Plant encouraged their move for climate change reasons.
“She said, ‘This is the spot,’” Horse said. “And every day she gets smarter and smarter, you know.”
He speaks about his new home warmly, including its tiny rock ’n’ roll radio station. He’s also a ledger artist — that’s his art in the 2017 Twin Peaks revival — and he has tapped into the local arts scene in the Duluth area.
Before Twin Peaks co-creator David Lynch died in 2025, Horse and Lynch got coffee.
Horse said Lynch didn’t want to talk film at all. He wanted to hear about Horse’s new home.
“[Lynch] says, what kind of trees do you have, Michael?” Horse recalled.
“And I said, ‘Oh, I've got all these different kind of pines, and I've got .... the birch.’ And he went, ‘Oh, how lucky you are.’”
He also has pine martens — or pine weasels, as they’re called in Twin Peaks. Horse saw one in his front yard and rang up series co-creator Mark Frost.
“And I went, ‘I thought you guys made that up anyway.’ [He said] ‘No, it's a real thing.’ I go, ‘Well, I got one in my front yard.’”
Frost has lived in California since the late 1970s, but he tries to make it back to Minnesota at least once a year.
For the last few decades, Frost has focused on writing books. His newest, “The Yankee Sphinx,” was released this week and tells a fictionalized story based on his uncle, who worked closely with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt through the Great Depression and World War II.
It’s a story of resilience through hard times, and Frost said Minnesotans may find that relevant after “Operation Metro Surge.”
“You've got to find a way to rise above it and to focus on the good,” he said.
“And, more importantly, focus on what you can do as an individual to combat it. And that answer is different for everybody.”
Chris Mulkey, the actor who played Hank Jennings, also lives in California but kept a house in the Twin Cities for a number of years. He still has family here and comes back often. He’s working on a third installment of the “Loose Ends” series.
“Minneapolis has always been a sense of inspiration for me,” he says.
Then he pauses for a moment. “Minnesota, I should say. My friends in St. Paul would go, ‘Hey, what about us?’”
