“Lost” premiered on ABC on Sept. 22, 2004, but one of its key players didn’t appear until Season 2: Villain-you-love-to-hate Benjamin Linus, played with spooky intensity by Michael Emerson.
Among the biggest questions on the show, along with what was the black smoke and what was in the hatch, was whether the castaways of Flight 815 could trust a stranger they found in the jungle who claimed to be a stranded balloonist named Henry Gale. Spoiler: No. His real name was Benjamin Linus and they could never trust that slippery weasel.
On the show’s 20th anniversary, TheWrap spoke with Emerson about the “magic” of the show’s night-time shoots, his favorite scene partner and how his role — which was originally just a three-episode guest shot — became a pivotal part of the series.
The actor, whose went on to play an even more diabolical villain on “Evil,” said that the early ’00s hit can never be recreated, although he does have a Ben-centric spinoff in mind.
You were only hired for three episodes originally.
Michael Emerson: Yeah. It’s like a character actor’s dream come true: You get called in to do a little job, keep your head down and then you find that whatever you’ve done is so useful to them that they’re going to keep you around.
How did that conversation go, something like, “Hey, we’d actually like you to stick around a bit?”
Well, it happened so slightly and slowly that I can’t even say that there was a moment. I had three episodes, and somebody said, “Well, no, it’s going to be more like five or six.” I thought, “OK, that’s fine. I hope I have enough clothes in my suitcase.” We’re working and working, there’s so much mystery around the character that I was originally playing Henry Gale, a hapless balloonist, but no one would talk to me about where this was going.
At some point, I went to one of the directors and I said, “It would be a real kick if we found out that the hapless balloonist is the leader of The Others, haha.” And he looked at me, and he blinked a couple of times, and he said, “I can’t discuss that with you.” And then I knew something was up there.
Do you think they had already decided that, versus you giving them the idea?
Well, I don’t know. [Producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse] never said anything one way or the other, except that eventually he was the leader of The Others, and they did keep me. It was very curious how it evolved.
The theories for that show just abounded. Did you have fans coming up to you and saying, “I think this is what’s going on?”
People had their theories, yeah, and they also had their gut reactions and opinions about characters. When I first appeared, people would come up and say, “I’m not watching that show anymore. You’ve ruined it. It’s not the show I want.” And I thought, “Well, what did you want? Did you think it was ‘Survivor,’ like, this is a romance about good-looking castaways? No, there’s a parable here. There’s an allegory. It’s good and evil here. We’re in an esoteric space. Now, come on.’”
Did you move to Hawaii at some point with the rest of the cast?
I would go each season and sublet an apartment and then go home to my real life, because I felt like it was bad luck to get too certain, to be so certain that you settle there, because what happens if you buy a house in Oahu and your character gets killed off?
And they did kill off a lot of characters, including your onscreen daughter, Alex (played by Tania Raymonde). That might be the worst thing Ben did in the whole series.
Yeah, it was terrible, a big, big turning point, certainly, and a terrific narrative surprise. Fantastic play on the part of the writers to turn the sympathy system of the show on its head and to be willing to sacrifice a loved character in that way, to make them a martyr, sort of. Yeah, that was heavy.
Was that a few days’ worth of shooting or just one?
There was just one long day where the camera was looking at me through the window of the house and seeing me see it happen and it’s a beautiful example of great editing, because it happens a beat earlier than the audience expects it. Someone’s counting down right? Keamy, the gunman (played by Kevin Durand). He’s counting down, but he doesn’t get to zero. He shoots early. So we’re like, “Wait no, but wait no, the count’s wrong, no, oh my God, she’s dead!” It was very disorienting. It was brilliantly done
Who was your favorite scene partner on “Lost?”
Terry O’Quinn (who played John Locke) and I had some magnificent scenes together, such high stakes, such danger, face-offs in cramped quarters where you didn’t know who was going to walk out of the room alive. It just was so terrific and a pleasure, because that work was easy. Terry and I are of a similar age and a similar level of experience, and we take it as seriously as the scene requires, but not more so, and then clock out at the end of the day. We had similar working habits and attitudes. So it was always a pleasure.
Do you have a favorite episode?
I thought the episode where he loses his daughter was strong stuff. I liked all the cat-and-mouse stuff early on, though, when we didn’t know who he was. So maybe those early episodes where he’s being held captive in the hatch and he’s toying with them.
I liked anything that was spooky that happened at night in the jungle, like, approaching the house of Jacob [Mark Pellegrino]. Oh, it was so eerie that night. The moonlight was just so … and there were wild pigs running around in the dark, and it was just like when you’re a kid and after dark, you’re playing ghosts or monsters or something like that, doing anything you can to make your hair stand on end. And the set had that feeling on some of those scenes, those nighttime scenes, it was great.
There were really wild pigs in Hawaii, how much did they interfere with filming?
Only to the extent that they would run through the set while we were trying to work, and we’d have to stop for a bit. And some guys would chase them. I don’t guess they ever caught them.
Does it feel like it’s been 20 years since “Lost” began?
No, but it was. It seems like it does go back into another era of television, in a way, it was at a turning point. I don’t know if it could be recreated. The particular magic of “Lost” was of its time and place. Partly, the oncoming of online fandom and stuff like that made a big difference.
It’s a good thing it was before Twitter. Everyone would have been spoiled instantly.
It was, in my experience, the beginning of that obsessive script security stuff, all the magic scripts with your name watermarked in it, and sometimes in colors that were unreproducible. The fan involvement, the desire, the hunger to get spoilers, or to get a script page, or to get a candid photograph from the set of some scene that was yet to air, that was intense back then.
The fact you were in Hawaii, in a fairly isolated location, that must have helped the secrecy.
It did help. Yeah, it would have been impossible in LA, I think.
Can you talk about the finale, where Ben is left out in the cold and doesn’t get to move on with the rest of the characters?
If we take as a premise that the other characters passed hand in hand, two by two into a happy afterlife, then Benjamin Linus doesn’t get to do that. He hasn’t passed, graduated, been redeemed. He hasn’t earned it. So he has to keep living multiple lives or something.
I think that the people who found, we can call it a true love, or people who found a mirror redeemer, were eligible for paradise. But Benjamin Linus did not have those things. He’s capable of it perhaps. So that’s when you need another whole series to see how he earns his wings, a spinoff.
“Lost” is available to stream on Hulu and Netflix.
