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| New Foxy interview on EW.com |
EDITOR'S NOTE: We sent our resident Lost-ologist to Hawaii to visit the set of the series, and he never came back. But he did send us his notes, which included this provocative Q&A with Matthew Fox. You'll find that the former Party of Five star has interesting and pointed things to say about grumpy Lost fans, spoiler-hounding Lost theorists, the alleged Jack-Kate-Sawyer love triangle, and those who are aching to see some, uh, jungle love. The interview with Fox was conducted during a rain squall under a wind-whipped tent shortly before Fox shot the opening scene of the May 10 episode, in which Michael tells Jack that Ana Lucia and Libby have been shot. Like his character, the star is frank and intense but generous. And as you'll soon realize, the man knows far more than he's telling. By the way: The interview was interrupted once by a visit from Desmond himself, Henry Ian Cusick. The two men exchanged pleasantries and then proceeded to discuss elements of the season finale that, alas, must remain off the record. If only we weren't so darn honorable!
DOC JENSEN: How would you characterize the difference between the first season and the second season?
MATTHEW FOX: Season 2 has been quite a bit different. Thematically, it's really dealt with the relationship among the core group with the Tailies. It's been a little more Lord of the Flies-ish. The first year was really about these people getting their bearings, getting blown back by some of the really odd things on the island. But the second year, there's been some alliances formed and broken, betrayals, and deception — a real ebb and flow in who's trusting who. That's been really cool, but it's definitely created a different energy among the cast. The first year was all of us transplanted here and getting to work on this thing and none of us having any pre-existing relationships. We were sort of bonding and hanging out a lot. But the time demands of the show, publicizing the show, and our outside interests have cooled that a bit — along with the kind of stories we're telling, which have portrayed us as a sort of fractured, frictional group of people. I think that builds toward the end of the year. It's mind-blowing. It leaves us feeling scattered and vulnerable in the face of a larger — or who we believe is a larger — foe, and walks us right up to the start of the next season.
Are you saying the second season hasn't been as much fun as the first?
I don't think so at all. It's just a little different. The show is a fun show to do. It's a lot of hard work, but it's really fun and interesting. Equally as fun, a different kind of fun.
This season has focused a lot on the island's mythology. What do you make of it?
I love it. I love what the producers are doing with it. I'm like the audience: I'm very excited to see where it's all going — and I'm looking forward to when it starts to congeal. But I'm also a huge fan of the story, and I'm going to be patient with that, and I hope the audience will, too. It's like a good book. I savor a good book. I don't want to speed through it to get to the end. As excited and anxious as I am to find out what's going to happen next, I still savor the experience. I look forward to these scripts with great anticipation. It's really building up. It's going to be a really cool ending. In fact, they're withholding from us how the second season is going to end. I look forward to reading those pages.
Are you seriously trying to tell me that you, Matthew Fox, have no idea how the second season will end?
[Smiles coyly] I have a pretty strong idea of what that's going to be and where that leaves us starting off in season 3. It's going to be a really exciting year. I think season 3 has this amazing start-off point.
So you do know how the second season ends and how the third season begins.?
[The smirk becomes more pronounced.] I'm very much looking forward — I'm pretty sure I know how the beginning of the third year is, and it's going to be awesome. [Straining to be both confidently conclusive and teasingly vague:] Let's just put it this way: I know enough about how this year ends, and I know enough about what the circumstances of that ending are going to be, to anticipate that the beginning of next year will have certain elements that are going to be neat.
New subject. What was it like shooting the scenes in which you discover Ana Lucia was dead and Jack struggles to help Libby?
It was intense. There are two sides to that question. There's the side of me that says it sucks to see people leave the show who really want to be here. It's also difficult dramatically to create those scenes. At the same time, I've always maintained that it's really important to the show that people perish. You can't create the kind of world that we're existing in and tell the story we're telling without people — the main people, the people you've gotten to know and the people you've fallen in love with — perishing. It's necessary, but it's hard. The Libby stuff — my character basically euthanizes her. It was an intense thing, for any doctor...
Speaking of intense: Jack seems to have gotten even more intense this year. He's showing so many rough edges, some fans have found him a little unlikable.
I really believe that Jack has this enormous sense of compassion, but an almost inflated sense of the value of life....He's also so phenomenally consumed with a need for revenge and anger and rage that he's almost numb to the whole experience in some way. It's tricky stuff, not easy.
Do you follow all the fan theorizing that takes place on the Internet?
No, I don't pay attention to it at all. Honestly. I think it's really cool; to me one of the most amazing things about this story — the way it's been told, the format and the structure — is that it provokes thought. It's a show that leaves people every week really hypothesizing and creating and imagining and spinning off scenarios and completing story lines in their heads. I don't personally pay attention to it because I don't think there's any value to it personally. I think there's probably an enormous amount of value in paying close attention to it for people constructing the story. I just try and stay focused on the things that help me do what I need to be doing. I don't have people throwing theories at me. I have people asking me what's going to happen — but they don't really want me to tell them. If I were to start to tell them — which I wouldn't — they would stop me. I'm pretty sure. So I have a pretty pat answer for those questions: ''I don't have any idea, and I'm not going to tell you if I did.'' [He flashes a small, mischievous smile.] But most of the time, I do know.
Let me ask you this: Do you know enough about the show and where it's going to have a definitive theory?
I think there's definitely enough of it that's still open to me where I have to be open to several different options. But I do have my own fairly concrete theory. I think I will ultimately be right — but I wouldn't want to go on record with it.
Are there any theories you think this season has effectively debunked?
I honestly think the purgatory theory has been debunked. That is the most prevalent and most widespread theory of the show and I think anyone who is really paying close attention to the show can safely say this is not purgatory.
Next page: Will Jack and Kate get jungle fever?
What have been your favorite moments this season?
The Jack episodes, where I'm asked to do some really intense stuff. The one about Jack and Sarah's marriage, and how that went down, and how all that tied into who Jack is and how he approaches this problem of reason versus faith — that stuff is really interesting to me. That stuff in general interests me. It's something we don't consciously deal with on a daily basis. But on a subconscious level, we do have a very intense need for some sort of spiritual connection. That stuff — the earlier episodes, the opener of the year, the argument between Jack and Locke of logic versus faith — that's all really cool stuff. And it's continuing and will continue, I believe.
What was your reaction to the introduction of the Dharma mythology? Was it as mind-boggling for you as it was for the fans?
It really was. Everybody was like, ''Whoa!'' I knew it was coming. I didn't know specifically, but I knew from Damon that something big was coming. We got so much heat last year — at the end of the first year — for not divulging enough information. Some people were almost really angry that we didn't go down the Hatch before we went into the hiatus. I'm like, ''Who the f--- would think that we would do that?'' That's what a cliffhanger is, man! You look down into the Hatch, but you don't actually go down into the Hatch! We got a lot of heat for not giving enough plot. So the producers being who they are, they are always going to pull the rug out from under you when you least expect it. They look for those opportunities and they set up you up for those opportunities, and then they do it. So not in the opener of the year, but in the third episode of the year, you suddenly get bombarded by a massive, massive amount of information and backstory. And that was really exciting.
What's your take on the fabled Jack-Kate-Sawyer love triangle?
Honestly — and I don't know exactly how this will sound — the honest truth is that I don't think of it as Jack, Kate and Sawyer. I think of it as Jack and Kate. The Sawyer element of it I don't even consider a reality. I'm really pleased with where Jack and Kate are. I think in the two years that we've been doing this show — which would amount to a couple months on this island — they are at their closest point. I think Jack's being a little bit more forgiving of her shortcomings or deceptions or misleading things in the past. I think there is a very deep desire there [for a relationship], and not just physical but emotional. There is a connection, and it's deep, and there's been so much in the way of that in the past, and I do think the year will end...[Fox suddenly interrupts himself, perhaps catching himself about to reveal more than he'd like.] At the same time, I've always maintained that you can't create the story we're creating and have people gleefully walking down the beach at sunset holding hands. It's not the story; it's not conducive to that. I think there will be a time when that's capable, but with everything that's happening on the show right now, it's not the kind of thing that would happen. So I think that while Jack and Kate are the closest they've ever been, and feel the most comfortable around each other and dealing with this thing that exists between them, there are other elements and other circumstances that are preventing it from being anything...
You referred to the time element of the show, which is something many fans — especially those impatient with the plot — tend to forget: The castaways have only been on the island for about two months, right?
Right. They feel like they've invested two years of their life on the show, so they're going, ''Come on already! By now, somebody would have f---ed in the jungle!'' And I'm like, ''No, not really.'' Because they were just in a massive plane crash a mere two months ago, and if you think back to all the episodes you've watched and all the things that have happened to these people, and put yourself honestly in that position, you probably would feel a little differently about how badly you want to see people hook up, or at the least the plausibility of people hooking up.
Twin Peaks had the same problem. Putting aside the legit complaints about the kookiness of the plot, people tend to forget the structure of the show: Each episode represented one day. So while it seemed like it took forever to solve the murder of Laura Palmer, in the reality of the show, it only took about 17 days.
I suppose that's one of the difficulties when you're meddling with time — when you're creating fictional stories that transpire at a different pace than the people who are receiving the story. You're always going to have frustration one way or another with that. And that definitely happens with our show, no question. I get questions all the time like, ''Why is Hurley so big still?'' I say, ''Well, he was a big guy when we started, and he's only been on the island for 60 days.'' But in their mind, he's been eating f---ing mangoes for two years! But no, actually, he's been eating mangoes for 60 days.
Mangoes — and ranch dressing and peanut butter.
That, too.
Is the Lost experience still fun for you?
It's been a really welcome life change for me and my family. The most important thing in the world to me is the three other people in my life, and so getting out of Los Angeles and being here and seeing how happy our kids are here, it's absolutely wonderful. And to feel that great about this place and the way we are living our lives, and at the same time be working on something I care about so much — it couldn't be any better.
Is there any part of this that's uncomfortable, especially here at the white-hot moment of the Lost phenomenon?
No. And by the way, that's exactly where we want to be. The pressure and the white-hot scrutiny is a very, very good thing for our show. We thrive on it, in some masochistic way. It's part of what makes this special. If you spend a lot of time watching how the show gets done, you'll know that it's a necessary ingredient to this.
What do you mean by that?
There's a spontaneity that comes out of desperation that lends itself well to the stories we're telling. It keeps people on their toes. There's a freshness and energy to it. If we were shooting this show on the backlot in Los Angeles — which could never logistically be done — but if you hypothetically could do it, the show would not be the show that it is. There would be a comfort and a complacency and a smoothness to that process that would take away from what ends up on screen.
Ah, but what happens if suddenly everyone wakes up in their beds back on the mainland with no idea how they got there?
Nobody is going to wake up on this show and mysteriously end up somewhere else.
Is that a promise?
[After a deliberate, contemplative pause] That's a promise.
Posted on Friday, May 19 @ 12:21:22 CDT by gertiebeth
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