Honestly, if you watched Twin Peaks back in the nineties—or even if you’ve just binged it on a streaming service recently—there’s one image that probably sticks in the back of your brain like a splinter. It isn’t just the Red Room or the giant. It’s Joan Chen’s face, or rather, the lack of it, as she’s literally sucked into a wooden bedside table.
It’s one of the most bizarre, unsettling, and frankly frustrating character exits in television history.
Joan Chen joined Twin Peaks as Josie Packard, the "vulnerable outsider" who owned the Packard Sawmill. She was supposed to be the classic noir femme fatale—shrouded in silk, perpetually worried, and hiding a past that involved more than just a little bit of Hong Kong underworld grit. But the way her story ended didn't just feel like a plot twist. It felt like a punishment.
The Mystery of Josie Packard
When David Lynch and Mark Frost were first putting the show together, the role of Josie wasn't even written for an Asian actress. It was originally intended for Isabella Rossellini. Her character was going to be an Italian woman named Giovanna Pasqualini Packard. When Rossellini couldn't do it, the creators pivoted. They cast Joan Chen, and suddenly the character became Josie, bringing a whole different energy to the town's power dynamics.
Joan was already a massive star in China. She’d been "plucked" from a school rifle range at 14 by Mao Zedong's wife for her marksmanship, which is a wilder origin story than anything in the script. By the time she hit the set of Twin Peaks, she was looking for a foothold in Hollywood that wasn't just "exotic" window dressing.
Josie was complicated. She was the widow of Andrew Packard, the lover of Sheriff Harry S. Truman, and the constant target of her sister-in-law Catherine Martell’s schemes. For a while, she was the heart of the show's "soap opera" side. But as the second season started to lose its way after the reveal of Laura Palmer’s killer, the writing for Josie got... weird.
Why Joan Chen Asked to Leave
Here’s something a lot of casual fans don’t realize: Joan Chen actually asked to be written off the show.
She was young, ambitious, and frankly, a bit naive about how television worked back then. She had her eyes on the big screen. Specifically, she wanted to star in a film called Turtle Beach, a drama about refugees. She thought that was her ticket to serious dramatic acclaim.
"I sort of preferred the big screen back then," she admitted in a recent interview with The Independent. She kept asking David Lynch if there was a way to let Josie go. Lynch, being Lynch, didn't just give her a bus ticket out of town. He gave her a nightmare.
That Infamous Drawer Knob
The exit happened in Season 2, Episode 16. After a tense standoff in a hotel room, Josie basically dies of pure terror. But instead of a funeral, we get a shot of her soul being pulled into the wood of a nightstand. We see her screaming face—miniaturized and distorted—trapped in a wooden drawer knob.
It was horrifying. It was campy. It was peak Lynch.
Mark Frost later recalled that Lynch just came in one day and said, "I think she gets turned into a drawer knob." It served a thematic purpose—connecting the spirits of the town to the Douglas firs and the timber that drove the local economy—but for the actress, it was a literal dead end.
The Regret and "The Return"
Fast forward to 2017. Twin Peaks: The Return is announced. Everyone is coming back. Kyle MacLachlan is back. Sheryl Lee is back. Even the Log Lady, Catherine Coulson, filmed scenes while she was terminally ill.
Joan Chen wanted in. She even wrote a letter to David Lynch, trying to "kindle some imagination" about how Josie could be freed from her wooden prison. Maybe she could be a maid? Maybe her spirit finally escaped the Great Northern Hotel?
But the answer was no.
Lynch is famously rigid about his "visions." If a character’s arc ended in a specific, metaphysical way, he rarely undoes it for the sake of fan service. While some fans theorized that the humming sound Ben Horne hears in his office in Season 3 was Josie’s spirit, Chen herself never stepped back onto the set.
Lessons from the Sawmill
What can we take away from the saga of Joan Chen in Twin Peaks? Honestly, it’s a lesson in the permanence of creative choices.
- Be careful what you wish for: Joan wanted out to pursue a movie (Turtle Beach) that ended up being a critical flop. She’s been very open about the fact that she regrets leaving the most influential show of the decade.
- The "Lynch" Factor: When you work with an avant-garde creator, your "exit" might not be a clean break. It might be a permanent residency in a piece of furniture.
- Legacy Matters: Despite the bizarre ending, Josie Packard remains one of the few significant roles for an Asian woman in 90s primetime TV that wasn't a total caricature.
If you’re a creator or an artist, think about the "drawer knobs" in your own work. Are you finishing a story because you’re bored, or because it’s the right end for the character? Sometimes, leaving a door open is better than locking someone inside the hardware.
If you want to dive deeper into the lore, go back and watch the scenes between Josie and Catherine in Season 1. The chemistry between Joan Chen and Piper Laurie is a masterclass in "polite" malice that modern TV still tries to emulate. Just... maybe skip the nightstand scene if you want to sleep tonight.