LOST Magazine #27
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LOST Magazine

An excerpt with Evangeline Lilly (Kate Austen) as featured in issue #27 of The Official Lost Magazine.

Season five was really a departure in Kate's arc, as the true man in her life was Aaron. Had you been hoping for a story that didn't revolve around romance and was just about something else that fundamentally impacted your character?

Evangeline Lilly: Yeah. I think you even quoted me as having wished for that for a good two seasons. By the end of season two, I believe you asked me what my hope was for next year, and it was to have Kate stand on her own two feet. I wanted to see her motivated by her own interests as opposed to the interests of the men in her life. So I was hyper-pleased with that! I had also always said, "If I could trade places with any character on the show, it would be Claire," because I would to be able to play a mother and play maternal. I was lucky in season five because two of my wishes came true. They were really the only things that I ever said I would like to see. Otherwise, I had always resigned myself to whatever the writers were going to do.

Having been a mother for so long to Aaron off the island seemed to change Kate to the core, and that was reflected in the compassion she showed to young Ben back on the island and in trying to save Juliet during The Incident. Do you think she would have done those things if she hadn't been a mother?

I don't think Kate would have had the moral/emotional connection to the notion of "You don't harm children" the way she did after being a mother. I think Kate was capable of harming children before that. I think that, unfortunately, she was that person that, "No matter what it takes, you do what you have to do," more like Sayid. I think it's interesting, because I have always been saying with the Jack/Sawyer conundrum, people would ask who I thought Kate should be with. Initially, in my opinion, I said Kate couldn't be with Jack because they were on a different level. He, in some ways, was somewhat more redeemable than she was. Therefore, I felt he didn't accept who she was, but needed her to become something different, and that's never healthy. With Sawyer, they were more on the same page and knew what it meant to be on the lam and to hate themselves for the things they've done. What's interesting about her having been a mother and the transformation that happened with that, I believe it elevated her to a place where she can now stand eye-to-eye with Jack. He can't stand on a moral high ground above her anymore because she had redeemed herself through the actions of sacrifice and love for her child.