You can’t think of ‘’Twin Peaks’’ without an image popping into your head of a little guy, speaking backwards, dancing in the red-coloured room. Such a memorable character for three-and-a-half foot tall actor Michael J.Anderson – who, as he tells CLINT MORRIS, had the quite time on the landmark 90s series; now being released in a ‘’Twin Peaks : The Definitive Gold Box Edition’’ DVD set.

You’ve just come from a recording session – how did that go?
Kinda like Twin Peaks, I didn’t actually know what I was doing. I never knew what I was doing on Twin Peaks, and when I think I did figure it out, [David Lynch] would tell me ‘No, that’s not it’. As soon as he had erased whatever my theory was, we were ready to go again.

So, you had no idea who killed Laura Palmer then?
Well, after I saw Fire Walk With Me I did…

Yeah [Laughs] that’s for sure.
But not until after I saw it – not while we were making it.

How did you get involved in ‘’Twin Peaks’’?
Well, you know, I made a documentary about the little man that works on the space shuttle and it won these international awards and so we sent one to David Lynch and the next thing I know I was having lunch with him and Isabella Rosselini at a café in New York called The Blue Lagoon.

Had he written this character for you..?
Well, I mean, would you call it a character?

Oh yeah, I’d call it a character.
I wouldn’t do that myself.

No?
It was an appearance of something or another but there was no real character – you know what I mean? There was no circumstance to it [Laughs]

If we did call it a character, I think you’d say he’s one of the most memorable things from the series. Anybody I mention ‘’Twin Peaks’’ to says ‘Oh yeah, the little guy that dances’!
Yeah, well, it was some kind of a thing – I guess, why not call it a character but then the people that played characters what would they think?

Did you teach everyone how to speak in that backwards voice?
No, I knew how to and that surprised [David] and when he found out he started to add lines for me and other people - but I can’t say I taught them how to speak backwards. David told us the lines, and then I would translate that line into a backwards speak for them, and they would learn that. So I was translating their lines into backwards scenes.

Can you tell me about working with David?
Well, it was completely different than working with any other director. A lot of other directors usually try everything they can to get you to understand their vision, and the more you understand about it the more you can do it perfectly, but with David he’d take pains to make sure you didn’t grasp it. Even when you thought you did, he’d take pains to erase that you thought you did. So you’re trying to do something perfectly but you don’t know what in the world you’re doing – and I mean at all! So it’s kinda like running around like a chicken with your head cut off. But you do the best you can under those circumstances and you just have to trust David’s vision and give in to the obscurity of it. It worked out. At the time I was working in New York, and I was working on a lot of different projects, and Twin Peaks was one that I just put down to being some experimental something or other and thought that was probably just the end of it. Then, a couple of years after we shot it, it just unrolled itself across the sky.

And how long after did you do the film, ‘’Fire Walk With Me’’?
It was at least a couple of years after the series ended I think.

The script for the film was very different to the finished version, is that right?
Well, whether it’s Mulholland Drive or Twin Peaks, you get the script and you do what you can with it but when I look at the finished product I couldn’t for the life of me predict that from reading the script - ever. A lot of the time, say like with Lord of the Rings – I thought that Peter Jackson was reading my imagination; it was just how I’d imagined it from the book exactly! Right out of my imagination! And he made the movie – I wasn’t even there! But David Lynch’s films – the final product so doesn’t resemble the script that it’s hard to even connect pieces of the script with pieces from the finished product. But there are those similarities – like, the lines! [Laughs]

Yeah, the dialogue doesn’t change! [Laughs]. Were you a fan of the show yourself?
You know, I have learned to be a fan. There’s a Twin Peaks festival that goes on every year in Washington and those fans – and there’s not a cross-section; not like the normal public – sort of taught me the rich depth to this work. The more I have come to understand it, the more it has come to serve my life as I’ve lived and grown older and moved into the future. But at the time, when I was on the series, I didn’t even watch it because I didn’t get it! [Laughs]

But you’ve seen both seasons now?
Yes, and not just that, I have friends – from the festival and that – that can recite Twin Peaks from beginning to end. Every word. I’ve more than seen it, I’ll tell ya! [Laughs]

You’ve lived it! Do you think David Lynch will return to ‘’Twin Peaks’’ one day?
I’ve been saying, I don’t think he will because he’s just evolved beyond it so far that it’s unbelievable. But you know, Inland Empire wasn’t received that well and maybe it’s because he’s just getting a little bit too far out of reach – he’s like the David Bowie character in Twin Peaks [Fire Walk With Me], he’s gone so far that the FBI was no longer able to track him! [Laughs]. And whilst I doubt that he will [return to Twin Peaks], maybe he just might find it fun? Maybe he can come back and visit Twin Peaks in some way that none of us can predict?

And what have you been up to in recent times?
Well, after Carnivale – which we had a lot of fun with – I’ve found myself in a position now where I can not only tell Hollywood no, but I can feel motivated to tell Hollywood no. I’m waiting for the right material. I mean, I get scripts where I’m the guy that jumps out of a box and I’m wearing a big hat. None of that stuff works for me. I don’t wanna wear the big hat, I don’t wanna jump out of a box. I look at my body of work and I’m happy with it –I have left an impression on the culture of the planet, and so if they do not want me to build on that, instead of just doing some rinky-dink thing, I’m not doing it. I did do an episode of Charmed, and I did that because you don’t say No to Alyssa Milano!

Indeed
It cannot be done. I reached in there and I could not find the No. They wrote a Leprechaun for me, which although it was a Leprechaun, it was a deep-plot Leprechaun – it was one of the best scripts in an episodic that I had ever been presented with. I did it and I got to meet Alyssa Milano! And believe you me, Television does not do her justice! You know how when you’re on a set and they’re lighting it and getting the camera ready and they’ve got someone standing in for the actress? Anyway, the director calls me over whilst that was happening, and he started telling me what to do in the scene, and while he was telling me that they replaced the lighting stand-in with Alyssa Milano. I nearly fell down! It was just an impact! I wasn’t even trying to walk and I nearly lost my balance!

You had some lovely ladies on ‘’Twin Peaks’’ too, though?
Yeah, I’ll never forget the picture of Heather Graham sitting on David Lynch’s lap. I said ‘Why isn’t she sitting on my lap?!’

And David also got to kiss Madchen Amick as Shelley on the show, when he played Gordon Cole!
Oh he was great as that character. I remember he had these really big hearing aids for the character and I remember in one scene he pointed to the hearing aids in a really loud voice and said ‘Do you see these things?’ For some reason that struck me as incredibly hilarious! [Laughs]

I’m surprised he hasn’t appeared in his own movies since
No, but he’s there in self portrait – he doesn’t appear, but he represents himself. He represents himself.

Twin Peaks - Seasons 1 And 2: Definitive Gold Box Edition is now available