Wendy Robie was performing repertory theater in Seattle when she received a call to audition for a role in Twin Peaks (1990), (which was also being filmed in Seattle); initially, she auditioned for another role in the series before David Lynch and Mark Frost (creators of the series) became determined to cast her as Nadine Hurley, Big Ed’s (played by Everett McGill) ferocious and eccentric, eye patch-wearing wife. Literally fresh off of their roles as Big Ed and Nadine Hurley, McGill and Robie (in her first movie role) starred in Wes Craven’s twisted tale of The People Under the Stairs (1991) (in which the two play a murderous mother/sister/wife concoction).
