Dana Ashbrook played Bobby Briggs in the original Twin Peaks television series. Bobby is Laura Palmer’s boyfriend at the beginning of the story, although their relationship is complicated by secrecy, infidelity, drugs, and the hidden sides of Laura’s life.
Bobby is the son of Major Garland Briggs and the boyfriend of Shelly Johnson after Laura’s death. His early portrayal presents him as volatile and involved in the town’s drug trade, but later episodes gradually reveal more responsible and sympathetic aspects of his personality. That development is one of the series’ recurring examples of characters becoming more complex than their first appearances suggest.
Ashbrook returned as Bobby in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me and Twin Peaks: The Return. In the 2017 continuation, Bobby works as a deputy at the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Station, giving the character a markedly different role from his troubled teenage years.
Bobby is sometimes confused with James Hurley, another of Laura’s former romantic connections; James was played by James Marshall.