Audrey Horne is a fictional character from the ABC television series Twin Peaks, played by Sherilyn Fenn. The character was created by David Lynch. She was introduced in the pilot. The daughter of Ben and Sylvia Horne, sister of Johnny Horne and half-sister of Donna Hayward, her storylines focused on her infatuation with the series protagonist Dale Cooper, infiltrating the brothel/casino One Eyed Jacks and becoming an activist through civil disobedience.
Appearances
Television
''Twin Peaks''
Audrey is 18 years old during the series. She eventually discovers that her father, business magnate Benjamin Horne, was the deceased Laura Palmer's lover. Audrey is labeled a troublemaker and she initially lives up to that expectation. In a memorable scene in the Twin Peaks pilot, she derails one of her father's business deals, worth millions of dollars, by interrupting a meeting of Norwegian investors and telling them about Laura's murder. Although Audrey and Laura were not friends, Audrey says she "kind of loved Laura" because she tutored Audrey's mentally handicapped brother Johnny. During the first season of Twin Peaks, Audrey develops a crush on FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper. She tries to help him investigate Laura's murder by infiltrating a Canadianbrothel, One-Eyed Jack's, as a hostess. She remains at the brothel for several episodes that bridge the series' first and second seasons, in danger of her life, while she makes some profoundly disturbing discoveries. In the show's second season, writers planned a serious relationship between Cooper and Audrey, but MacLachlan vetoed the plan; he argued that Cooper would not become involved with a teenaged girl. Cooper admits to Audrey during their last significant conversation that the real reason why he would not pursue her was for her own safety. In a previous FBI case, he had fallen in love with a young woman who was then murdered. Later in the second season, Audrey flirts with Bobby Briggs and then falls in love with one of her father's business associates, John Justice Wheeler. She finds evidence to exonerate Cooper of charges pressed after his raid on One-Eyed Jack's. She also lets her father pressure her into entering the Miss Twin Peaks beauty pageant, for which she delivers an impassioned speech in favor of saving endangered species. In the series finale, Audrey is engaged in an act of civil disobedience at the local bank to save the local forest. After chaining herself to the door of the bank vault, a bomb explodes inside the vault, a booby trap planted by the late Thomas Eckhardt as an ironic reward in a long treasure hunt. Andrew Packard, Pete Martell, and an elderly banker are the ones closest to the blast, and Audrey's fate is left ambiguous. In the finale, it is suggested that Audrey is actually the half-sister of classmate Donna Hayward, whose biological father turns out to be Benjamin Horne. Fenn stated in an interactive chat on America Online that, if there had been a third season of the show, her character was slated to have survived the explosion.
''Twin Peaks'' revival series
Fenn reprised her role as Audrey in the 2017 revival of Twin Peaks, first appearing in the episode "Part 12". She is depicted as being unhappily married to a man named Charlie, and trying to reconnect with her former lover Billy, who has gone missing. She and Charlie go to search for Billy at the Roadhouse, where the house band breaks into the "Audrey's Dance" theme music featured in the original series, and Audrey begins to dance. Suddenly, a fight breaks out in the club and Audrey demands Charlie take her home. The club disappears and she finds herself in a bright white room. Once again, her fate is left ambiguous, although some critics speculated the ending was meant to suggest that she is either still in a coma, in a psychiatric hospital, or a "Lodge" similar to the one Cooper is imprisoned in at the end of season 2. Lynch has said that Audrey's eventual fate is left open to the viewer's interpretation. In the revival, Doc Hayward reveals that Cooper's evil doppelgänger visited her in the hospital shortly after the bank explosion; it is implied that the doppelgänger raped her, resulting in the birth of her sociopathic son, Richard. In his spinoff book Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier, released shortly after the premier of the revival series, series co-creator Mark Frost explained Audrey's fate following the original series: She woke from her coma a month after the bank vault explosion, pregnant from having been raped by Cooper's doppelgänger, and opened a beauty salon. Ten years later, she married her financial advisor. She then went into seclusion.
Literature
In the 2016 tie-in book The Secret History of Twin Peaks, it is revealed that Audrey survived the blast, but Pete, Andrew and the banker all perished. It is implied that Pete saved Audrey by shielding her with his body.
Merchandise
released a POP! Vinyl figure of Audrey.
Development
Spin-off series and ''Mulholland Drive'' concept
Originally, Audrey was set to have a spin-off series but it eventually was scrapped. The concept for the series turned into David Lynch's 2001 film Mulholland Drive. In David Lynch: The Man from Another Place, Dennis Lim states that "While working on Twin Peaks, Lynch and Frost also toyed with the idea of a spin-off series for Sherilyn Fenn's character, Audrey Horne, that would transplant the backwoods femme fatale to Hollywood. They planned to call it Mulholland Drive. While Lynch began to adapt the idea into a feature script, he abandoned it in order to make Lost Highway.
Theme music
composed the leitmotifs Audrey's Dance, Audrey's Prayer, and Audrey for the character.
Reception
Sherilyn Fenn received critical acclaim for her performance as Audrey, and was nominated for an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award.
