Sky Ferreira can hardly believe that Twin Peaks is happening again—let alone that this time around she’s a cast member. A self-described super-fan of David Lynch’s oeuvre, Ferreira learned that Lynch would develop an original character for her after she auditioned for the revival, which returns to Showtime on May 21. When she first latched onto Lynch’s bizarre, hall-of-mirrors brand of storytelling, she felt a distinct sense of relief: “Someone else gets it. Suddenly, it was like, ‘Oh, there’s someone else [like me].’ ”

One aspect of her fandom might come as a surprise to anyone who’s naïvely watched Mulholland Drive alone in their room with all the lights off. “People are always like, ‘David Lynch’s work is so dark,’ and I don’t see anything dark about it,” she says. “It’s hard to describe. Life is violent and weird and dark, and we can’t really explain any of it. That’s true of all of his work. But for me, it was always weirdly hopeful.”

Ferreira’s darkly iridescent pop carries echoes of the score composer Angelo wrote for the original homecoming-queen murder mystery. Yet while the 24-year-old has been asked to keep details of her character under wraps, she tells Vanity Fair that she will not be playing an extension of her musical persona. “I’m not, like, Julee Cruise as myself,” she says, referring to the singer-songwriter behind the enigmatic Twin Peaks theme. “And I’m kind of glad I’m not. I got to be something completely outside of myself.”

Ferreira did, however, receive Cruise’s blessing after performing that theme, “Falling,” at Lynch’s Festival of Disruption in Los Angeles this past October, alongside composer Angelo Badalamenti, who wrote the show’s score, and a full orchestra—with Lynch sitting front row. No pressure!

“I didn’t try to sound like Julee Cruise, because she’s the only one who can sound like Julee Cruise. I tried to do it justice—at least to sing it on key,” she says. She and Cruise remain Instagram friends to this day (“She sends me pictures of her dog and stuff”).

Falling for Lynch’s work on-screen was one thing, but having him direct her was quite another. Once, Ferreira spotted one of her favorite actors, Harry Dean Stanton—who will return for the Twin Peaks revival, though his character remains a mystery—and the two briefly chatted. Given the strong “emotional” connection she felt to the Lynchian world since first immersing herself in it as a teenager, filming with original cast members felt surreal. “The whole time, I was thinking, I’m in it. The thing is, I already live [Twin Peaks] in my head—but I wasn’t imagining it this time.”