LOST Magazine - Special Edition

LOST Magazine

An excerpt with Evangeline Lilly (Kate Austen) as featured in The Official Lost Magazine Souvenir Edition.

Season six certainly had unexpected narratives including flash-sideways and the war between Jacob and the Man in Black. What did you think about playing both storylines?

It seemed like a natural development in their expanding narrative style. I have really enjoyed playing [the flash-sideways Ben] as it's like I get to play another character on the series. Actors don't usually get that chance unless they play an evil twin. I'm thinking, "We're looking at an alternative life but is it real? Is everything equally real and happening simultaneously?" Luckily, they don't need me to figure that out [laughs]!

Ben Linus in the flash-sideways is a pretty selfless educator and the sort of guy you would actually like to know...

Yes, I like that we get sort of the same Ben, but he's in a different key. Like the other Ben is in saturated colors and this Ben is in pastels. He's more of an everyday person. He has some of the same impulses or the potential to have some of the personality traits of real Ben but it's all muted. The urge for power, manipulation and the ambition is much more minor for him. It's nice to play a Ben who tries to do some of the things that his alter ago was so successful at, but he's not as confident with it.

Do you think it's been devastating for Ben to know that he's not a Candidate when the island has been his whole life?

The writers haven't had Ben dwell on it much except that every once in awhile he says something a little bitter or cryptic. But I think it's always irked him to be passed over when he's been nothing but passed over.

With the story playing out like the writers intended, do you have any disappointment in not having some specific resolutions play out in the episodes or for Ben in particular?

From the minute I picked up 6.01 and I saw we weren't moving down a path to a conventional resolution then I thought, 'I need to begin to empty out my backpack of expectations for this role, for this story and for the whole show. I have to accept plotlines that will be unresolved, mysteries that will be unanswered and loose ends galore.' So it's alright with me if Ben walks through a door and says, "I'll be back in a minute" and we never see him again. That's how he has appeared in the lives of most people he has ever known. He's this mysterious man that comes and goes. Maybe the best end to Ben is for us to lay awake thinking that he is out there somewhere doing what he has always done [laughs]!

[Lost Magazine then had the pleasure of catching up with Michael Emerson after he'd finished shooting The End...]

What are your final thoughts on Lost's Mr. Benjamin Linus?

It's been a great character. It would be hard to imagine that I would ever play a more mythic or iconic character on a TV show ever again. They don't come along like this every day.

Lost Magazine Souvenir Edition is on newsstands now. Click here to check out what's inside.