Lost soul
As Lost premiers in Dubai this week, star of the show Matthew Fox talks to Time Out about his second chance at fame, the elusive monster, and the trials and tribulations of filming in Hawaii. Words Michelle Byrne.
Lost starts much like any high-octane TV drama: with a bang. Quite literally. In episode one we see a jumbo jet plummeting through the air whilst en route to Los Angeles from Australia, before violently crash landing and leaving 48 of its passengers washed up on a seemingly idyllic island in the South Pacific. From the very first scene viewers will need to strap on their seat belts, especially as the survivor role call includes a doctor, a convict, a rock star, an Iraqi military vet, a heavily pregnant woman and a more-thanmeets- the-eye Korean couple – who are all forced to fight for their lives as hopes of rescue die as quickly as some of the less interesting cast members. But it’s for what we can’t see, including a surreal, vicious monster that stalks the survivors, that Lost has captured the imagination of millions of viewers and internet conspiracists.
With its heady mix of action and adventure, supernatural suspense and slow-burning romance, Lost was touted as the TV event of the year Stateside, drawing in a massive 22 million viewers and winning a string of awards and critical plaudits when it premiered. And with season one hitting the UAE’s airwaves this week, Dubaians can finally see what all the fuss is about. It is one of the most expensive television dramas ever made after all, and while TV pilots usually cost around $5million, Lost’s opening episode crashed onto screens carrying a hefty bill for $14.2million. It’s money well spent.
‘Lost is going to set the bar pretty high for the television industry,’ says Matthew Fox, star of the show and unspoken leader for the characters, whilst on set in Hawaii. ‘It’s a cultural phenomenon. It’s very surprising how much the show has blown up so quickly. I always believed that the show was amazing, that it would do very well, but I’m just not used to this kind of thing.’
Having made his name playing Charlie Salinger in the television show Party of Five for six years, Fox explains that, in 2000 when the show ended, ‘I kinda dropped out a little bit, I felt it was important to put that character behind me and let people forget about the one version I did.’ He then ‘developed his craft’ in the theatre. ‘People advised me to jump on the wave of that (Party of Five) hype. You know ‘you gotta get it while you’re hot’, but I didn’t feel ready professionally or personally.’ So he waited two years before taking an all action role in the critically-acclaimed, but commercially unsuccessful show Haunted.
While Fox’s character Dr Jack Shephard has the same rugged nice-guy sheen as Party of Five’s Charlie Salinger, he stresses that Jack is an altogether more complex character. ‘I didn’t want to play the really perfect hero guy because I don’t think those guys exist,’ he says. Although Fox admits that his sometimes naïve character has to get streetwise and learn to play a little dirty. ‘Jack is going to be reminding everybody what’s right and what’s wrong,’ he says. ‘But… the show will descend into some pretty dark places.’
Fox has been sold as the show’s male sex symbol, and Lost has skyrocketed the chiselled hunk from Wyoming, USA onto the front covers of the world’s best-selling magazines. But in real life the 39-year-old poster boy is a happily married man with two young children who all moved to Hawaii to be with him during filming. The chemistry on screen with his sexy 26-year-old co-star Evangeline Lilly, in her first major acting role as the enigmatic Kate Austen, has been one of the show’s main attractions. So can we expect any romance between Jack and Kate? ‘There’s a real deep attraction that neither one of them can get past,’ he says. ‘He’s drawn to her. There’s so much going on between Jack and Kate, but it’s tricky,’ he adds cryptically.
Viewers had better get used to question marks without answers. Attempting to unravel the island’s mysteries will undoubtedly become a talking point lasting the full seven days between episodes, reducing gripes about traffic and the increase in the city’s rental prices to a mere murmur. Who are the survivors and why do their histories tie together; what is the strange creature stalking the rainforests alongside the polar bears and wild boars; and how do impossible wishes inexplicably come true?
Created by JJ Abrams (Alias) and Damon Lindelof (Crossing Jordan), Lost’s plot twists have been a well guarded secret. None of the actors were allowed to read the script prior to auditioning, but when Fox finally did get his hands on it he says he ‘just loved it. I really thought it was the best thing I had read, maybe ever, certainly in television,’ he gushes. Even now that the cast are filming the second season in Oahu, Hawaii, they still have to wait for the latest scripts to be delivere before they know whether their characters will live, die, be savaged by the mysterious creature or find a way of escaping back to their former lives. ‘JJ and Damon are very good at keeping the actors in the dark – they don’t want us to know any more than our characters would know,’ says Fox. ‘I don’t even know what the creature is. They said it was a monster. It’s a thing. The only thing I know is it’s not a dinosaur. They’ve been very emphatic about that. If anybody’s watching the show because they are just dying to find out what the monster is, they are in for a very, very long haul.’
Lost created a furore in the US and Europe when it debuted, and websites were lit up with fans hatching plans and conspiracy theories in a situation reminiscent of the reaction to the brilliant if bonkers Twin Peaks. Some of the best to crop up on the web so far include: all the survivors are actually in hell; they are all being toyed with by manipulative aliens; and the storyline is simply a dream. But the crafty Fox refuses to be drawn on the subject. ‘I’m very attracted to the big philosophical questions about us as a species and whether our nature is good or evil, Lost is an incredible premise and platform for exploring those questions.’
The huge, but ever-diminishing, cast of Lost includes Lord of the Rings hobbit Dominic Monaghan and film circuit familiar Naveen Andrews, as well as relative newcomers like Yoon-jin Kim and Maggie Grace – and there isn’t a weak link among them. Filming in paradise, Fox says they have all bonded extremely well, with weekly get-togethers to watch the show relished by cast, crew, family and friends at each other’s houses. ‘There’s something about this situation, about going to this island, and all of us having to pick up and leave and start over in a new place, like these characters are doing on the show,’ says Fox. ‘Our personal lives parallel our characters’ lives in some pretty broad ways.’
What started life on the drawing board as a simple Survivor drama has become a cinematic experience unrivalled by anything else on the small screen. The sterling scripts and suspenseladen storylines have culminated to produce a show that simply should not be missed. Hollywood directors are not forming an orderly queue to direct second season episodes for nothing, and for once the hyperbole doesn’t have to be taken at face value. Lost is a fantastic find and will keep audiences gripped, baffled and amazed. It should be a turbulent ride.
Lost begins Friday November 18 on TV Land.