LOST Cast Scoop

Clip from Syfyportal regarding the new cast members on LOST:

With speculation running high that ABC's "Lost" won't return until the February sweeps period in early 2008, fans are craving any information they can find about the new faces appearing on the show.

During an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the program's executive producers, shed a little light on the actors and the roles they will be playing in the new season.

For example, Ken Leung was on the producers' "must-have" list after they saw "Remember When," an episode of "The Sopranos."The part he's playing -- it's a character we wrote very specifically for Ken. Nobody else read for it. It had to be him," Lindelof said.

"It is so specifically geared to what we thought he could do as an actor that if he had said no, we would have had to scrap the character and rewrite him and come up with a different one," noted Cuse.

Regarding Lance Reddick, best known for the HBO series "The Wire," Cuse said, "We had been interested in Lance back when we were casting the Mr. Eko part, but he was unavailable. That's how we started circling around Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who ultimately took the role. When a window of opportunity arose after the recent season of 'The Wire,' we jumped on it, with a part that seemed right for his complete focus and intensity."

Reddick will apparently play a "corporate recruiter," defined by the "Lost" crew as a character with a skill set best used for coercion.

When Rebecca Mader, who starred in "The Devil Wears Prada," auditioned, the producer who was taping her noticed a lot of her resume included work for the BBC in Great Britain and asked her, "Are you British?"

According to Lindelof, "She said yes, and we asked her to read it again, this time as a Brit, and it opened up another dimension we hadn't foreseen. Now she's English."

If anyone knows what it's like to live in an exotic area like the remote island on "Lost," it is likely that Jeff Fahey, who appeared in "The Lawnmower Man," has a good idea.

"He's been running an orphanage in Kabul, Afghanistan," said Cuse. In fact, when the actor was called to offer him the part, "he was in Caracas, Venezuela, using the same model to set up an orphanage there."