Post by bobdoc on Jan 25, 2008 19:03:35 GMT -4
From a newspaper called The Daily Times, at www.thedailytimes.com/article/20080125/ENT/428986212
And in addition, the paper also has another Lost columm about Season 4, in which Michael gives a few comments. From www.thedailytimes.com/article/20080125/ENT/849565343 I'll list the topics and Michael's comments.
LAND OF THE 'LOST': As bad guy Benjamin Linus, actor Michael Emerson prepares for Season Four
By Steve Wildsmith
of The Daily Times Staff
WARNING! This story may contain references to significant plot points in previous seasons of “Lost”! For those who have yet to view those episodes, don’t say we didn’t warn you!
The title of the episode is “The Man Behind the Curtain.”
It was the 20th episode of Season 3 of “Lost,” the hit ABC series about a group of plane-crash survivors stranded on a mysterious island. Up until that point, actor Michael Emerson had always viewed his character, Benjamin Linus, as a Machiavellian sort, leader of the mysterious “Others” who seem to be up to no good and out to do in the main characters introduced in the first season.
When he read the script for “The Man Behind the Curtain,” however, Emerson was taken aback. It was a juicy episode for Ben Linus, one that revealed how he came to the island and wound up affiliated with the “Others.”
What he wasn’t prepared for was the eruption of violence at the episode’s end — the scene where he shoots John Locke, played by actor Terry O’Quinn, in the back.
“When I got that flashback episode last season, it made my hair stand on end,” Emerson told The Daily Times during a recent phone interview. “I was shocked that the writers would have me behave as ruthlessly and violently as they did in that episode. It’s my job to perform the material, but I did talk to them and say, ‘Just a reality check here — call me a Pollyanna, but I’ve always had this sort of private notion that Ben would be revealed to be in a more positive light.’
“They just told me, ‘Hold onto that. We’ll come back to that in a different direction later on.’ It’s all part of the misdirection of this series, I suppose. Maybe it really serves their end to have the audience believe me to be a ruthless villain.”
Emerson laughs good-naturedly, freely admitting that — aside from the episodes he’s already filmed — he’s as in the dark as the millions of viewers who watch “Lost” every week and obsess over every newly revealed detail of the show’s broad-reaching story arc.
For the uninitiated, “Lost” is a series that alternately fascinates, entertains and drives viewers to the brink of madness. What began as a concept that seemed like a hipster version of “Gilligan’s Island” quickly developed into a water-cooler phenomenon — the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 were treated as flawed anti-heroes, a group of castaways thrown together in a way that, on the surface, seemed to be circumstance … but as the show has progressed, it’s become clear that nothing on “Lost” is coincidental.
Through flashbacks, the viewers have discovered the secrets each “Lost” cast member hides, as well as those hidden by the island itself. From a mysterious “smoke monster” to polar bears in the middle of the jungle to an old slave ship marooned several miles inland, nothing on the island is as it seems. “The Others” were first introduced at the end of Season One, but it wasn’t until midway through Season Two that Emerson made his debut — as a scared, wounded man discovered in the middle of the jungle who claimed to be the survivor of a hot-air balloon crash.
Gradually, it was revealed that Emerson’s character was actually the leader of “The Others,” and Season Three was devoted to the showdown between the plane-crash survivors and those who answer to Emerson’s Linus.
To go into much more detail would take dozens of pages of newsprint, but what it boils down to is this — nothing is as it seems. Every answer to the show’s multitude of riddles only serves to raise five new questions. And while the show’s creators have announced that only three 16-episode seasons remain (including Season Four, which launches Thursday night), the story is far from wrapping up.
Emerson compares the gradually unfolding story to that of a novel — each episode amounts to a few pages, and each season completes another chapter. It won’t be until the novel’s end, however, that all questions are answered and all clues make sense. And there’s no use trying to pry anything more out of him than that.
“I know nothing but what’s on the page for that episode — I know nothing further down the line,” he said. “I assume the writers have a master outline, but I think the whole story lives in the head of (“Lost” co-creator) Damon Lindelof. I suppose Matt Fox (actor Matthew Fox, who plays Dr. Jack Shephard, leader of the survivors) could pick up the phone and chat with Damon about what’s going to happen this season, but I sort of like the mysterious place I inhabit. I don’t know anything until I get the script.
“And if you can embrace that sort of storytelling, as I’ve had to do, it turns out to be fairly freeing. I don’t need to have a back story for Ben. I don’t need to know what he had for breakfast or what he thinks of his parents. He lives simply for the present moment. Ben is a game player and an improviser, and playing him that way means I don’t have to make many judgments about him. I can let the audience and the writers take care of the story arc and the balance of good and evil.”
Such seat-of-the-pants acting is new for Emerson, who studied theater and art at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa (the state in which he was born and raised), before moving to New York City. His early concentration was on the stage, and after teaching and directing for seven years, he enrolled in the Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s University of Alabama-sponsored Professional Actor Training Program, after which he returned to New York.
His break came in 1997 when he stared as Oscar Wilde in the off-Broadway play “Gross Indecency: The Trials of Oscar Wilde.” That led to additional stage roles, including one opposite actress Uma Thurman in 1998 and actor Kevin Spacey in 1999. His work gradually caught the attention of network television, and after playing the fictional serial killer William Hinks in several episodes of ABC’s “The Practice,” he was rewarded with an Emmy Award in 2001. (He earned another nomination last year, for his portrayal of Benjamin Linus.)
In 2004, he made an impression in the horror film “Saw,” starring as Zep Hindle, the character who also turns out to be a villain. There are similarities between filming “Saw” and “Lost,” Emerson said, but the latter is a lot safer work — and the location filming in Hawaii has its upside.
“I don’t fear for my personal well-being on ‘Lost’ as I did on ‘Saw,’” he said. “Making that movie was one of the most harrowing experiences of my life. ‘Lost’ is hard work, because we’re in the outdoors so much and working in what could be, at the very least, described as very unpleasant conditions — the heat, the fake rain, the makeup, the fake blood. It seems I always have something in my eyes. There are a lot of physical miseries involved, but then you turn around and you’re rewarded with these staggeringly beautiful landscapes.”
At the end of Season Three, Emerson was covered with a lot of fake blood — in the season finale, it seems Fox’s Jack Shephard and the other castaways had finally gotten the better of “The Others.” The season ended with Jack beating Ben bloody, Locke showing up miraculously healed from his Ben-inflicted gunshot wound and the plane-crash survivors giddy over the prospect of finally being rescued, despite Ben’s warnings that the would-be rescuers aren’t who they seem.
Like his castmates, Emerson is guarded about what transpires this season — but without saying so, it seems like his character turns out to be right.
“There are going to be a bunch of new and uneasy alliances in Season Four,” he said. “No one has a home anymore, for one thing. ‘The Others’ are on the march, what few of us are left, anyway; and the ‘Lost-aways’ are on the march. There’s no safe place to light. Everyone is, in fact, a refugee, and the characters are deciding which philosophical and practical cliques they want to be a part of.
“And as bloody as the season finale was, that ain’t the last beating Ben will take. It’s a bloody season, Season Four — things are going to get worse before they get better.”
As always, he added, Ben Linus will do whatever is necessary to position himself back in control of the puppet strings — even if it means taking another face-pounding.
“He takes punches pretty well, and he doesn’t seem to blame people that much for it,” Emerson said of his character. “It seems to him that it’s just a technique that’s part of his plan — to get from A to C, he has to take beating B, and if that’s the case, so be it.”
Whether additional details about Ben Linus’ past will be revealed remains to be seen. Whether he gets more or less screen time this season — well, that’s up in the air, too. All Emerson knows is that yes, there’s one particular episode he’s looking forward to, and that he can’t say much about it other than that it’s big.
“We jumped around during filming — some mornings, we’d be shooting episode two, and that afternoon we’d be shooting scenes from episode four, and in between sneaking in some inserts for episode three,” he said. “But there is one episode — either the third or the fourth — where I have a very earth-shattering scene. I looked at the script and thought, ‘OK … here we go!’ It couldn’t have been more perfect, and when I saw the set we were going to work on, I thought, ‘This is going to light up the message boards when this goes out! This is rich!’”
That said, Emerson doesn’t want to see Benjamin Linus become the focus of the show. Given the ensemble nature of “Lost,” such a possibility is unlikely, but as far as Emerson is concerned, the less screen time his character gets, the better off the story is.
“I’m always grateful if he has slightly less screen time,” Emerson said. “I’m always conscious that a character like Ben might be too over-exposed. He might could wear out his welcome. I think a lot of what works in Ben is the sense of mystery and the unknown. I’m glad that he doesn’t get over-familiar to the audience.”
But what about Ben’s ultimate goal? If he’s a sort of cosmic chess player in what appears to be a metaphysical and spiritual allegory, what does he hope to accomplish? Where will he end up?
In other words, how will “Lost,” when the final episode airs in 2010, leave the fans?
“I don’t know how the plot wraps up — I don’t know what the island will turn out to have meant or what the stakes were,” Emerson said. “I have a sense that the series will end sadly, and that it will be on a note of regret.
“As for Ben, my suspicion is that, if I survive the series, that I don’t see Ben as a person whose character is malleable. He’s never going to be a suburban dad or a car salesman or a novelist. My suspicion is that Ben is in some kind of war, and no matter what happens, that war is probably never going to go away.”
By Steve Wildsmith
of The Daily Times Staff
WARNING! This story may contain references to significant plot points in previous seasons of “Lost”! For those who have yet to view those episodes, don’t say we didn’t warn you!
The title of the episode is “The Man Behind the Curtain.”
It was the 20th episode of Season 3 of “Lost,” the hit ABC series about a group of plane-crash survivors stranded on a mysterious island. Up until that point, actor Michael Emerson had always viewed his character, Benjamin Linus, as a Machiavellian sort, leader of the mysterious “Others” who seem to be up to no good and out to do in the main characters introduced in the first season.
When he read the script for “The Man Behind the Curtain,” however, Emerson was taken aback. It was a juicy episode for Ben Linus, one that revealed how he came to the island and wound up affiliated with the “Others.”
What he wasn’t prepared for was the eruption of violence at the episode’s end — the scene where he shoots John Locke, played by actor Terry O’Quinn, in the back.
“When I got that flashback episode last season, it made my hair stand on end,” Emerson told The Daily Times during a recent phone interview. “I was shocked that the writers would have me behave as ruthlessly and violently as they did in that episode. It’s my job to perform the material, but I did talk to them and say, ‘Just a reality check here — call me a Pollyanna, but I’ve always had this sort of private notion that Ben would be revealed to be in a more positive light.’
“They just told me, ‘Hold onto that. We’ll come back to that in a different direction later on.’ It’s all part of the misdirection of this series, I suppose. Maybe it really serves their end to have the audience believe me to be a ruthless villain.”
Emerson laughs good-naturedly, freely admitting that — aside from the episodes he’s already filmed — he’s as in the dark as the millions of viewers who watch “Lost” every week and obsess over every newly revealed detail of the show’s broad-reaching story arc.
For the uninitiated, “Lost” is a series that alternately fascinates, entertains and drives viewers to the brink of madness. What began as a concept that seemed like a hipster version of “Gilligan’s Island” quickly developed into a water-cooler phenomenon — the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 were treated as flawed anti-heroes, a group of castaways thrown together in a way that, on the surface, seemed to be circumstance … but as the show has progressed, it’s become clear that nothing on “Lost” is coincidental.
Through flashbacks, the viewers have discovered the secrets each “Lost” cast member hides, as well as those hidden by the island itself. From a mysterious “smoke monster” to polar bears in the middle of the jungle to an old slave ship marooned several miles inland, nothing on the island is as it seems. “The Others” were first introduced at the end of Season One, but it wasn’t until midway through Season Two that Emerson made his debut — as a scared, wounded man discovered in the middle of the jungle who claimed to be the survivor of a hot-air balloon crash.
Gradually, it was revealed that Emerson’s character was actually the leader of “The Others,” and Season Three was devoted to the showdown between the plane-crash survivors and those who answer to Emerson’s Linus.
To go into much more detail would take dozens of pages of newsprint, but what it boils down to is this — nothing is as it seems. Every answer to the show’s multitude of riddles only serves to raise five new questions. And while the show’s creators have announced that only three 16-episode seasons remain (including Season Four, which launches Thursday night), the story is far from wrapping up.
Emerson compares the gradually unfolding story to that of a novel — each episode amounts to a few pages, and each season completes another chapter. It won’t be until the novel’s end, however, that all questions are answered and all clues make sense. And there’s no use trying to pry anything more out of him than that.
“I know nothing but what’s on the page for that episode — I know nothing further down the line,” he said. “I assume the writers have a master outline, but I think the whole story lives in the head of (“Lost” co-creator) Damon Lindelof. I suppose Matt Fox (actor Matthew Fox, who plays Dr. Jack Shephard, leader of the survivors) could pick up the phone and chat with Damon about what’s going to happen this season, but I sort of like the mysterious place I inhabit. I don’t know anything until I get the script.
“And if you can embrace that sort of storytelling, as I’ve had to do, it turns out to be fairly freeing. I don’t need to have a back story for Ben. I don’t need to know what he had for breakfast or what he thinks of his parents. He lives simply for the present moment. Ben is a game player and an improviser, and playing him that way means I don’t have to make many judgments about him. I can let the audience and the writers take care of the story arc and the balance of good and evil.”
Such seat-of-the-pants acting is new for Emerson, who studied theater and art at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa (the state in which he was born and raised), before moving to New York City. His early concentration was on the stage, and after teaching and directing for seven years, he enrolled in the Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s University of Alabama-sponsored Professional Actor Training Program, after which he returned to New York.
His break came in 1997 when he stared as Oscar Wilde in the off-Broadway play “Gross Indecency: The Trials of Oscar Wilde.” That led to additional stage roles, including one opposite actress Uma Thurman in 1998 and actor Kevin Spacey in 1999. His work gradually caught the attention of network television, and after playing the fictional serial killer William Hinks in several episodes of ABC’s “The Practice,” he was rewarded with an Emmy Award in 2001. (He earned another nomination last year, for his portrayal of Benjamin Linus.)
In 2004, he made an impression in the horror film “Saw,” starring as Zep Hindle, the character who also turns out to be a villain. There are similarities between filming “Saw” and “Lost,” Emerson said, but the latter is a lot safer work — and the location filming in Hawaii has its upside.
“I don’t fear for my personal well-being on ‘Lost’ as I did on ‘Saw,’” he said. “Making that movie was one of the most harrowing experiences of my life. ‘Lost’ is hard work, because we’re in the outdoors so much and working in what could be, at the very least, described as very unpleasant conditions — the heat, the fake rain, the makeup, the fake blood. It seems I always have something in my eyes. There are a lot of physical miseries involved, but then you turn around and you’re rewarded with these staggeringly beautiful landscapes.”
At the end of Season Three, Emerson was covered with a lot of fake blood — in the season finale, it seems Fox’s Jack Shephard and the other castaways had finally gotten the better of “The Others.” The season ended with Jack beating Ben bloody, Locke showing up miraculously healed from his Ben-inflicted gunshot wound and the plane-crash survivors giddy over the prospect of finally being rescued, despite Ben’s warnings that the would-be rescuers aren’t who they seem.
Like his castmates, Emerson is guarded about what transpires this season — but without saying so, it seems like his character turns out to be right.
“There are going to be a bunch of new and uneasy alliances in Season Four,” he said. “No one has a home anymore, for one thing. ‘The Others’ are on the march, what few of us are left, anyway; and the ‘Lost-aways’ are on the march. There’s no safe place to light. Everyone is, in fact, a refugee, and the characters are deciding which philosophical and practical cliques they want to be a part of.
“And as bloody as the season finale was, that ain’t the last beating Ben will take. It’s a bloody season, Season Four — things are going to get worse before they get better.”
As always, he added, Ben Linus will do whatever is necessary to position himself back in control of the puppet strings — even if it means taking another face-pounding.
“He takes punches pretty well, and he doesn’t seem to blame people that much for it,” Emerson said of his character. “It seems to him that it’s just a technique that’s part of his plan — to get from A to C, he has to take beating B, and if that’s the case, so be it.”
Whether additional details about Ben Linus’ past will be revealed remains to be seen. Whether he gets more or less screen time this season — well, that’s up in the air, too. All Emerson knows is that yes, there’s one particular episode he’s looking forward to, and that he can’t say much about it other than that it’s big.
“We jumped around during filming — some mornings, we’d be shooting episode two, and that afternoon we’d be shooting scenes from episode four, and in between sneaking in some inserts for episode three,” he said. “But there is one episode — either the third or the fourth — where I have a very earth-shattering scene. I looked at the script and thought, ‘OK … here we go!’ It couldn’t have been more perfect, and when I saw the set we were going to work on, I thought, ‘This is going to light up the message boards when this goes out! This is rich!’”
That said, Emerson doesn’t want to see Benjamin Linus become the focus of the show. Given the ensemble nature of “Lost,” such a possibility is unlikely, but as far as Emerson is concerned, the less screen time his character gets, the better off the story is.
“I’m always grateful if he has slightly less screen time,” Emerson said. “I’m always conscious that a character like Ben might be too over-exposed. He might could wear out his welcome. I think a lot of what works in Ben is the sense of mystery and the unknown. I’m glad that he doesn’t get over-familiar to the audience.”
But what about Ben’s ultimate goal? If he’s a sort of cosmic chess player in what appears to be a metaphysical and spiritual allegory, what does he hope to accomplish? Where will he end up?
In other words, how will “Lost,” when the final episode airs in 2010, leave the fans?
“I don’t know how the plot wraps up — I don’t know what the island will turn out to have meant or what the stakes were,” Emerson said. “I have a sense that the series will end sadly, and that it will be on a note of regret.
“As for Ben, my suspicion is that, if I survive the series, that I don’t see Ben as a person whose character is malleable. He’s never going to be a suburban dad or a car salesman or a novelist. My suspicion is that Ben is in some kind of war, and no matter what happens, that war is probably never going to go away.”
And in addition, the paper also has another Lost columm about Season 4, in which Michael gives a few comments. From www.thedailytimes.com/article/20080125/ENT/849565343 I'll list the topics and Michael's comments.
Who are those would-be rescuers?
“I haven’t worked with many of them, but I have had some scenes with Ken Leung,” Emerson said. “He plays a really interesting, scary kind of character. I think he’s really going to make an impression.”
Is Michael returning?
“If so, I haven’t shot any scenes with Harold,” Emerson said. “I have seen Harold in Hawaii, and when I saw him, I didn’t think he was there for vacation.”
How will the strike by the Writer’s Guild of America affect what was originally scheduled to be a 16-episode season?
“I haven’t heard anything from the network,” Emerson said. “All I hear is that the network still intends to finish this season if they can. I would assume there’s got to be a magic date in late February or early March when, if an agreement isn’t reached, they’ll have to say, ‘Look, we’re going to can this season. We’ll see you next year.’
“That’s frustrating for us as actors, because it’s a demanding show physically and psychologically, and we shoot it far from home. We had a head of steam going, and this season, more than ever, there’s a lot of jungle shooting and location shooting and a lot of violence. And once you get down inside something like that, you want to finish it instead of contemplating getting inside of it later and firing it up again.”
What about the smoke monster? The ‘Black Rock’? The Dharma Initiative? Jacob? What gives? Can’t you tell us more?
We’re afraid not. Secrets must be kept, Emerson said, to preserve the storyline.
“Never before has there been so much in the can without being aired — before, we would be shooting only two or three weeks before a show aired, but this season, we’re a long way ahead of the viewers,” Emerson said. “Because of that, there’s the danger that some of the secrets could get out. Some stuff has been revealed lately, and memos were sent out reminding everyone that this stuff hasn’t aired yet and that we should be discreet. Somebody gave up something big, but I gather that ABC caught it before it went to press.”
“I haven’t worked with many of them, but I have had some scenes with Ken Leung,” Emerson said. “He plays a really interesting, scary kind of character. I think he’s really going to make an impression.”
Is Michael returning?
“If so, I haven’t shot any scenes with Harold,” Emerson said. “I have seen Harold in Hawaii, and when I saw him, I didn’t think he was there for vacation.”
How will the strike by the Writer’s Guild of America affect what was originally scheduled to be a 16-episode season?
“I haven’t heard anything from the network,” Emerson said. “All I hear is that the network still intends to finish this season if they can. I would assume there’s got to be a magic date in late February or early March when, if an agreement isn’t reached, they’ll have to say, ‘Look, we’re going to can this season. We’ll see you next year.’
“That’s frustrating for us as actors, because it’s a demanding show physically and psychologically, and we shoot it far from home. We had a head of steam going, and this season, more than ever, there’s a lot of jungle shooting and location shooting and a lot of violence. And once you get down inside something like that, you want to finish it instead of contemplating getting inside of it later and firing it up again.”
What about the smoke monster? The ‘Black Rock’? The Dharma Initiative? Jacob? What gives? Can’t you tell us more?
We’re afraid not. Secrets must be kept, Emerson said, to preserve the storyline.
“Never before has there been so much in the can without being aired — before, we would be shooting only two or three weeks before a show aired, but this season, we’re a long way ahead of the viewers,” Emerson said. “Because of that, there’s the danger that some of the secrets could get out. Some stuff has been revealed lately, and memos were sent out reminding everyone that this stuff hasn’t aired yet and that we should be discreet. Somebody gave up something big, but I gather that ABC caught it before it went to press.”
