David Lynch’s longtime producer Sabrina Sutherland has described Unrecorded Night, the late filmmaker’s unreleased limited series, as “probably the best thing he ever did.”
Sutherland — who worked with Lynch on projects like Twin Peaks and Inland Empire — was speaking with culture magazine A Rabbit’s Foot when she was quizzed on the series.
“I’ll say this: It was probably the best thing he ever did. It was a culmination of a lot of things. We worked on this for over two years in terms of writing, and we were still writing up until the point he passed away,” she said.
“We were getting ready to go back to Netflix because he had re-envisioned some things about it, and it had morphed into something even better than it was. I hope that one day people will be able to experience it in some way.”
Last month, Lynch’s daughter, Jennifer, told The Times that the family was thinking about releasing the Unrecorded Night script as a published piece of work.
“None of us ever tried to make his series in his place,” Jennifer told The Times. “We are considering offering that as a published piece, so that people can sit with his ideas. It would be very sad if people didn’t get to see it.”
After David Lynch died of cardiac arrest following an emphysema diagnosis, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos revealed that the Twin Peaks creator “came into Netflix to pitch a limited series, which we jumped at,” adding that he will “always wonder about what he had in mind for us with what would have been his last project.”
“It was a David Lynch production, so filled with mystery and risks, but we wanted to go on this creative ride with this genius,” said Sarandos. “First Covid, then some health uncertainties lead to this project never being produced but we made it clear that as soon as he was able, we were all in.”
Although her father had “not officially” cast the show before his death, Jennifer is confident he would have reunited with longtime collaborator Kyle MacLachlan.
“I was sworn to secrecy but yes, I’m sure Kyle would have been part of it. And Laura [Dern], and Naomi [Watts]. He loved to play with his friends,” she noted.
