IamRayWise

WOW, that's a lot to answer. I'll take 'em one at a time.

It was right after the Emmy Awards that year, I remember. We were just about ready to shoot the reveal scene where Laura's cousin Maddie gets killed, and David and Mark Frost called myself, Sheryl Lee (who played Maddie) and Richard Beymer (who played Ben Horn) into a little meeting before we started to shoot that show. And it was in that little meeting that David said to me "Ray, it's you, it's always been you," and that's when I found out that my character, Leland Palmer, was the killer of Laura Palmer.

I was momentarily shattered by it, because i didn't want to leave town. And the whole idea of being the killer of my own daughter, even fictionally on the show, didn't sit very well with me. And so I was hoping the whole time we were doing the show that it wasn't going to be me, and I could have made a great case for it to be ANYBODY in that town - the reason Ben Horn was in that meeting was because when we shot that scene, where Maddie was murdered, three different characters, 3 different people killed her that day.

The first was Bob.

The second was Richard Beymer as Ben Horn.

And then the third was me, as Leland Palmer.

So poor Sheryl Lee as Maddie was killed three times that day, by 3 different people. And so after about 12 or 14 hours of shooting, we were all ready for the paramedics, you know, to give us some sort of boost!

Was I annoyed by it? That's too mild a word, hahaha! (he said laughingly)

I was extremely, extremely disappointed when I found out that it was my character who was doing the killing on the show. So yeah, I was very disappointed and I wish that it wasn't me. But indeed it was.

And when David told me about it, he told me I would have a great sendoff, a great show, and he explained to me the scene when Leland was dying, and the sprinklers were falling on his face, and he is in Agent Cooper's arms, and Agent Cooper is reciting the Tibetan book of the Dead, and Leland looked down the long tunnel towards the white light and there was his daughter Laura with her arms out, forgiving him ... so the way he explained that scene to me, he made all my disappointment vanish and I was very pleased with the way old Leland went out.

Oh, it was great fun! I mean, me and the gang of bad guys - all of us - we were just like, you know, 12 year old boys blowing up the neighborhood with firecrackers!

There was an entire block in a section of Dallas, Texas, that was scheduled to be demolished, and we shot there for a couple nights, some night scenes where we just blew that entire block up with our explosions. All the store fronts were blown up - you'll remember that particular scene, where we're trying out our new 50 caliber guns on the storefronts of that street in Dallas - and we blew up that whole street and had a WHALE of a time doing it.

And then of course, we went to outside of Pittsburgh to an old steel mill, that was closed down, because they don't make any steel there anymore, it's been shipped out to other countries I believe which is a shame, but in that steel mill was the largest blast furnace on earth.

And so that was a great time - running after Robocop and trying to blow him up in that steel mill! And then of course as my character Leon, I was able to drop a big piece of scrap iron on top of Robo, and knock 'em down, but then his sidekick, the Nancy Allen character, shot a rocket at me up in that crane-booth and blew my character up.

And I still - for that particular explosion, they had put my costume on a dummy that looked a little like me, and so when that crane booth blew up, it looked like I was being blown up, and they gave me that costume off of that dummy after the explosion, and I still have it. It's all in tatters, with all these burn marks all over it, and it's still in my closet.

Oh my!

I'm what you would call an EXTREME horror fan!

As a young boy, I grew up in the 1950's and it was a great time for horror, great creature features, great sci-fi with invasions from outer space, and then great, great horror from outfits like HAMMER films where I became enamored with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. And I'm a big fan of DRACULA - I was given a first edition of Bram Stoker's Dracula when I was about 10 years old, and ever since then, I'm half-Romanian, that is part of my heritage, that whole Transylvanian thing, so being half-Romanian, I identified with that whole Dracula myth and the area of the world that it came from.

So I've been an avid horror fan as long as I can remember. I still watch everything that i can on Netflix and anytime someone sends me a film of theirs that's a horror film I always give it a look, and I"m always in the market for making a new one myself, as an actor.

So I'm a big, big horror fan.

Hahahhaa!

Well, fans come up to the most for Leland Palmer, which made quite an impression on the world I guess - we were seen in 70 countries 20 years ago. And then fans come up and say how much they enjoyed my Devil, in Reaper. RoboCop would be right up there, being in that film. And then there's always the occasional fan who'll come up with something more obscure, like SWAMP THING, another horror film where I played Dr. Alec Holland, who becomes Swamp Thing. I made that movie with Adrienne Barbeau - I did the voice of the Swamp Thing for the second movie as well.

And do you make a good spaghetti sauce? Because i love a good spaghetti sauce, with meatballs. And it makes great leftovers. And just cook up some fresh pasta, it goes a long way, it's very filling and tasty.