LOST Interview!

MATTHEW FOX SPILLS ON SEASON FOUR OF ‘LOST’

"New York, N.Y. – Writer’s strike got you down? Favorite programs off the air? Fret not: It’s a new year, and that means a new crop of shows. In this week’s issue, Entertainment Weekly will take strike-weary readers through 37 shows expected to hit the airwaves in the months ahead. From Survivor: Micronesia to Battlestar Galactica, the winter and spring’s TV schedules will more than fill the void left by the absence of some of our all-time favorite shows.Speaking of favorites…no mystery here: one hit show that will have us all reaching for the remotes come January 31 will be Lost, starring EW cover boy Matthew Fox!

“I think the show’s going to be better in its last three seasons than it was in the first three,” admits Fox about the eight-episode fourth season premiering this month. “There’s going to be some huge mind-blowing s---.”As mind-blowing as the season three ender in which we last saw Dr. Jack Shephard (Fox) become an oxycodone addict in an unprecedented flash-forward? “I’m not sure I ever thought that people were going to get off the island,” says Fox in his Q&A with EW. “Damon [Lindelof, who co-wrote the finale with fellow exec producer Carlton Cuse] did such an amazing job of orchestrating something that when you’re looking at it for the first time it feels like a flashback, but there’d be little things that are a little odd—like why Jack seems so ridiculously messed up. You think it’s in relationship to his marriage falling apart, and then boom, you go, “Oh, my God, this is a leap forward in time. What does that mean? Why is he suicidal?” I just think that’s great.”Fans have been analyzing last season’s flash-forward since it aired seven and a half months ago.

Does this new device mean that fans will now be guessing “Who else is getting off the island besides Jack and Kate?” instead of the age-old question of “Who’s dying next?” “That’s the question for the first part of this year, for sure,” says Fox. “Jack gets people off that island, [and] suddenly he and the other people are very well known— it becomes this massive story because everybody thought that every person on this plane was lost…. Who are they? What is everybody else doing? Jack’s mission was to get all of them off. It’s the overriding force behind him. So, the fact that he ends up getting off and doesn’t get that accomplished—I’m very curious to find out how that all goes down…. If I start giving you words about what I think it’s really about, I’m going to be honing in on some stuff that I’m not sure I’m authorized to talk about. A truck might pull up and a bunch of dudes in suits get out and mow us down with Uzis. [Laughs]Seriously.”

Now that we know Jack and Kate make it off the island, has some of the renowned Lost death scare been taken off them? “There’s no question. People are like, ‘Well, it’s not going to be Jack or Kate for a while.’ We have to get from the island to that point in the future before it can become a real threat again. But it can become a threat again – and it will,” says Fox. “When Jack Shephard goes, “We have to go back,” that means he’s f---ing going back. And if there’s 48 episodes [left], you know that Jack is going back on that island for a certain section of episodes. That means that he could die.”

Enough talk about death…is Matthew Fox happy with the direction Lost is now taking? “Yes…Last year, we find out that Jack and Kate are off the island. How the f--- did that happen? And why does he want to go back? In answering those questions, you have to start addressing the bigger, epic scope of the show. In doing that, you’re going to get into questions about the show that the audience is just dying to start finding out. What is this island? Where is this island? When is this island?”

Despite its rabid fanbase, Lost has received its fair share of criticism for losing its focus and for introducing too many characters into the mix. Case in point, the short-lived Nikki and Paulo. “Those characters didn’t work for me from the very beginning,” admits Fox. “I was part of the camp that was like, ‘What? Huh?’ That was one of those experiments where [the producers] were like, ‘Can we suddenly introduce characters that were part of the crash victims but we’ve never seen them before, and have them become characters on the show?’ And the answer to that question is…no.”

With the Lost premiere just weeks away, are there any other secrets that Fox would like to divulge? Well, check out the expanded Q&A at ew.com/matthewfox or turn to the cover story on page 23 to find out!

Source: EW