Though the Williamsburg brat wall might be gone, the cultural dominance of Charli XCX’s album of existential party jams continues apace. Beloved by young people who routinely shut down the afters despite having an 8 a.m. meeting the same morning, brat has defined a summer brimming with record-breaking heat waves, a tense political climate, and abandon-filled partying. Oozing with club sleaze, the album has sparked a full-on “brat summer” phenomenon that’s since influenced dudes’ sartorial choices and prompted frenemies to leave their snide subtweets in drafts and “work it out on the remix” instead.
brat has also found an unlikely megafan in Kyle MacLachlan—area dad, vintner, self-proclaimed fan of going to bed early, and actor best known for playing quirky characters like Special Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks, Paul Atreides in the original Dune, and Trey MacDougal in Sex and the City. Most recently, MacLachlan took on the role as Overseer Hank MacLean in Amazon’s Fallout adaptation and co-hosted Varnamtown, a podcast that unpacked the unusual story of a North Carolina fishing town that became one of Pablo Escobar’s favored cocaine smuggling hubs.
MacLachlan, 65, has gone full brat over the last few weeks. He briefly changed his profile photo on Instagram to read “Kyle” in the album art’s lime green web 1.0 font. He’s been telling everyone that “Von dutch” is his song of the summer. The other day he posted a wholesome video of himself, clad in a lime green shirt, busting a move to the aforementioned “girl, so confusing” remix with Lorde. Beyond his appreciation for club bangers, his love of brat stems from his admiration of Charli XCX’s approach to songwriting. To him, it draws on something very human: The constant oscillation between feeling “confident one minute” and “completely undernourished the next.”
MacLachlan took a break from his brat summer to tell GQ about the courageousness he sees in Charli XCX’s lyrics, the trends he decides to weigh in on via his social media presence, his ‘80s club-going days, and what he makes of the internet dubbing him an honorary it girl.
GQ: You’re a big fan of brat, I hear.
Kyle MacLachlan: I really enjoy it. The one that I really love, the banger I love, is “Von dutch,” of course. It’s just got such a great groove, if you want to move. But…I mean, she's very authentic. And the lyrics are very honest, I think they're heartfelt. And she asks a lot of questions which I think any artist should ask, continue to ask: Where am I? Why am I here? Do I deserve this? Yes, I deserve this. Hey, maybe I'm not sure I deserve this. And she continually goes back to her roots. So she's maintained that connection, which I think is really important to do. If you lose that as an artist, you can spin out.
Have you been a fan of Charli XCX’s for a while, or was this the first album that grabbed you?
No, not that long. A lot of my music comes from my son, first of all, because he's constantly changing his playlist. I get to listen to it when I drive him to his surfing experiences or his volleyball matches. And I love it. He’s got a great musical sense and encompasses many different eras. I find stuff on there that I'm like, “Why are you listening to songs that I listened to when I was your age? I like it!”
If you're of that age today, your musical world is so much more expansive than when I was that age, right? I was 15 in ‘74, ‘75. And the music that I was interested in listening to was pretty narrow, when you think about it. I enjoyed older music, but really, it was what was happening then and maybe a little before me. Now they have all these different eras to draw from, and to find. It's kind of great.
Also, I'm working with a wonderful creative team to help me post these, of course, and they are constantly bringing me new material, new songs, new things to think about. I'm so grateful, because I'm like, Oh, thank you. I make these discoveries with their help, and it keeps me musically going. We all tend to get sort of moored. Music was super important — primarily for me, [in] junior high and high school, music was everything — and then life sort of takes over and you begin to engage less and less, at least I do. This is a way of keeping me fresh, I guess. Which I appreciate, at 65 years old.
So did your son introduce you to “Von dutch”?
This one actually came through my social crew. [They] played it and I was like, What is that? And I said, This is amazing. And so then I went in and said, Okay, I gotta listen to the album. And then that started me on my Charli XCX tour, which was really fun.
Why do you think this album has resonated with you so much?
There's a real mix of the styles on it…but then there's also these reflections. I thought that her also referencing some of her influences — she talks about SOPHIE — is great. And the other one that I really like is “I might say something stupid,” because I was like, I totally relate to that. We all do. I think it's kind of universal, when you're out somewhere and you're feeling like you don't quite fit in, or oh god I’m gonna do something dumb. Or you feel insecure.
And I thought that to be so…open isn't really the word, but to expose the insecurities, along with the confidence and to be able to do both? And then both of these things living in this person is such the journey of an artist. It’s the journey of everybody. But with an artist, you have to draw from that. I think it's really healthy to ask those questions.
Has that made you reflect on your own trajectory as an artist?
So funny you say that. Yes, it did. It boosts you when you recognize somebody else: Oh, someone else has a journey that I think is important. And she expresses that in the album so beautifully. It's just somebody that you go, oh, yeah, I recognize that journey.
It reinforces your own creative well that you draw from. Going to the deeper places is always going to be more difficult, of course. But also more impactful to the world. And as artists that’s what we try to do: influence through our experiences, or at least share through our experiences. Which I feel she does, and it also seems like it's an important part of who she is. This is part of who she is, and she's okay with it. She’s very courageous.
Does dealing with those feelings of insecurity as a creative person ever get easier?
They are there. You know what I mean? And I think there's a courage you have to have, or maybe a naivete, that you have to have where you just say, I'm gonna go forward. I always try to follow and say: Is this authentic to me? But there's a courage that I think it takes to jump into something.
Speaking of jumping into things, you’re very up on social media trends with your Instagram videos. How do you choose what to weigh in on?
[My team] brings stuff, I have stuff. We sit together and talk about what we like, so we plot it, and then we create the scene. It’s definitely a collaboration. They are also very good at following a trend, finding a trend, which we then bend to our needs. Some of the things that I’ve posted I'm like…okay….we’re gonna jump into this. But I do get a kick out of it. It does make me laugh. My social [presence] is primarily about enjoyment, and fun. And maybe a little bit of make you think.
Can you tell me about one social post that you came up with, and one you did that was a bit outside of your comfort zone?
So we were doing some stuff for Varnamtown. Cocaine figures very heavily in that story, obviously. We [did one where we] were recreating the laundry soap. One of the stories goes in Varnamtown that there was so much cocaine stashed around that this lady actually used cocaine to wash her clothes.
Oh my god.
She thought it was laundry soap, so we recreated that. That was fun. Another one that we did was the post where I wore the hot dog outfit and did the Chappell Roan song. That was me going Okay—I’m trusting you on this (laughs) and that was really fun. I've got a really good filmmaker — she also works at Full Picture, my wife's company on the creative content side — and she's just got a great sense of shooting. We iPhone it up and away we go. We make it pretty easy.
Was that the first time you had worn a hot dog suit?
It was the first time. We have a hot dog suit for my dog, but sadly it was in New York, and we were shooting in LA (laughs.) I was thinking to myself: This would have been perfect! But anyway, yeah, I believe that was the first time. Maybe not the last, though. You just never know.
Tell me about how “the girl, so confusing remix with Lorde” video of yours came about.
They brought that one to me. I thought it was just…fresh. You’re talking about the relationship, and the two of them [Charli XCX and Lorde] as artists and I was like, okay, this is cool. Everything we do, I just pull from what I have in my closet. So I had the green shirt, which was perfect for brat. And then I thought it would be really fun to have, because the last [part] is “Cause I ride for you, Charli,” So I said, let's just cut, boom, and then go to the car. But they brought that to me for sure. We sort of futzed with it in the making. But again, we spent not a great deal of time [on it]. It’s very raw.
Is your wardrobe gradually becoming more lime green?
(Laughs) I think it was a workout shirt that I had. And I had to reverse it. I remember there was the tag of the shirt sort of sticking out, and I was kind of like oh, should we take the tag off? And one of the girls said no that's good, let’s keep that on. And and sure enough, so many comments came back saying what’s with the tag on this shirt? It was like, oh my god, this is so confusing. What's going on? So you can do things within that because people are paying attention. You can lay down a little Easter eggs, little clues, little things that some people get some people don't get. That’s part of the fun.
Speaking about the lime green aesthetic, I saw someone post a screenshot of you in the Dougie Jones green jacket [from his role in Twin Peaks: The Return] saying it was very brat-coded.
Love that. Funny enough, I hadn't even thought about that until I saw it. I was like, Oh my god, we set the trend.
You and David Lynch somehow knew.
Well, David is a man outside of our world and our time. And he is so incredibly creative and important in my life, of course. He has such a great sense of humor himself. I think he's one of the reasons we get along so well. We just both have this odd sense of humor.
What do you make of the internet calling you an honorary it girl for your brat fandom?
I am flattered (laughs). Once I understood “babygirl” then everything fell into place.
I also noticed that you briefly changed your Instagram profile photo to say “Kyle” in the brat font?
Yeah. Something about it is very catchy to me. I'm not a club person. I guess I was when I was younger. But it’s bright and it grabs your attention, and also it's a little…off. And simple. Which I like too. There’s a simplicity to it that I think is compelling, and eye catching.
I was curious if you liked going out to clubs or going out dancing. Sounds like it's not your thing these days?
Not my thing these days. That was a younger me (laughs).
What music were you into during your club-going days?
We’re going back. Michael Jackson. David Bowie. What else? Human League. That era was like, early ‘80s. And it started when I was down in Mexico City filming Dune. And on the weekends, there was a young crew in the art department, and some people working there knew the clubs in Mexico City. So just because we were working so hard all week, we would go out Saturday night to dance clubs. It was really fun.
Any final thoughts about your brat summer?
This summer is a lot about spending time with my wife and my son, and the joy of that. So we're doing a bit of traveling. We're actually going to be doing two stops, one in Spain and one in Italy. It’s always fun if you're in Europe, there are two reasons to go out: You’re with a fun group of people, and you’re also, timewise, on a completely different schedule. So you wake up at like noon, and then you don't go to sleep until four in the morning, because that's the jetlag. And so we tend to just sort of stay in that cycle. Which lends itself to being out late, because I'm not a very good late person to be honest. I love to be in bed at 10, 10:30 if I can.
I'm seeing on Charli xcx’s website that she has a tour date in Ibiza later this month. So if you happen to be there…
I have not seen her live, I would love to. It’s so high energy and so performative. And she seems to just really be enjoying herself, which is awesome. What better place to see her than Ibiza (laughs)? That would be perfect.