Fox Leads an Island of the 'Lost'

[Sydney]

At home in Hawaii, "Lost" star Matthew Fox gets on the phone. He doesn't exactly sound peppy, as he's just about wrapped up nine months of filming on the hit ABC freshman drama.

"I'm really, really toast right now," he says in a slightly hoarse voice. "I'll be shooting right up until 4 o'clock tomorrow morning. Then I get on a flight almost immediately, about noon tomorrow, to Los Angeles to finish two days of shooting there.

"That's where the interior plane set is. That's a hint. There's some stuff right at the very end of the finale that involves the interior of the plane."

Executive produced by J.J. Abrams ("Alias") and Damon Lindelof, "Lost" is about the more than 40 survivors of doomed Oceanic Airlines Flight 815, which crashed on a mysterious tropical island.

Over the season, many scenes have flashed back to the last moments on the airplane before all hell broke loose. So it shouldn't be shocking that such scenes would be in the show's two-part finale, which concludes with a two-hour episode on Wednesday, May 25.

Fox plays Dr. Jack Shepard, a spinal surgeon who has become the survivors' caretaker and de facto leader. Jack was on the ill-fated Sydney-to-Los Angeles flight to bring back the body of his estranged father (John Terry), also a doctor. He's good man and a natural leader, despite his doubts and emotional issues.

Jack has also shown self-control, especially where the island's bad boy and chief hoarder, con-man Sawyer (Josh Holloway), is concerned. The two have clashed, but Jack still lent Sawyer medical assistance when needed. Jack has also kept a lid on his simmering attraction to Kate (Evangeline Lilly), a fugitive who is drawn to both Jack and Sawyer.

"You can't have Sawyer without Jack," supervising producer Javier Grillo-Marxuach says. "The thankless job that Jack has is to be the straight man. They're the duality. They're one of the most important character axes on the show.

"Everyone talks about Jack and Kate and the romance, but it's really Jack and Sawyer. Sawyer represents everything Jack can't be. He's the id, and Jack is the superego. Hurley's the ego."

"Jack allowed Sawyer to push his buttons for the first part of the year," Fox says, "because he was struggling so hard with control and then realized there was this element that he really couldn't control. At some point, Jack had so much on his plate and feels that people should be contributing, and you've got this one element that is just a negative, a hole of self-serving energy.

"It's always something I've loved about the way Damon and J.J. were writing this character, that he's our hero, he's our guy, but he's also the kind of guy that, if he let himself go to the dark place, could do real serious snappage on a guy like Sawyer."

While Hurley (Jorge Garcia), a genial lottery winner whose favorite word is "dude," seeks to boost survivor morale with jokes and a golf tournament, Jack has little time for such frivolity.

"Hurley doesn't have 46 people to take care of," Fox says. "Hurley's whole definition of himself certainly isn't based on being able to take care of and keep alive 46 people. So when one of those people dies, there's an enormous responsibility taken by Jack. That's what heroes are supposed to do.

"I've intentionally looked for any moment in the year where the guy can smile and the guy can find humor, but those moments aren't easy for me to find."

As for Jack being a natural leader, Fox says, "I think, way down, he is. He is an instinctual leader and an instinctual very heroic guy, but he has all this baggage and this really almost disturbing back story with his father. It's a strange relationship, but it's one that I think every single man can relate to."

Because of that baggage, Fox feels Jack needs to prove to himself that he can be a leader. "That will probably be Jack's path of redemption," he says, "getting through all of that to the core of himself and really becoming that guy who's not getting in his own way, not putting so much pressure on himself, just doing but not judging the consequences of it."

While Jack has taken on a leadership position, Fox has assumed a similar role.

"I felt that both on-screen and off," he says, "being No. 1 on the daily call sheet and having the most amount of work to do, there's a responsibility that goes along with it. We had a lot of production issues to iron out this year, so we were running into obstacles quite frequently, just getting a big beast of a show running as efficiently as we possibly can.

"Along with that comes a lot of frustration on people's parts at times. The cast, across the board, has been wonderful the whole year, but certainly there have been allegiances and things that have built up among the cast. It's almost my responsibility, in the position I'm in, to make a conscious decision to be there for anybody that has problems or wants to hang out."

Early in the season, that included regular Wednesday-night viewing parties at Fox's house ... swimsuits optional.

"I enjoy taking my clothes off and jumping in the water," Fox says. "I'm not going to worry about getting changed into a swimsuit at 2 o'clock in the morning. I really wanted to get people together, get them partying. I wanted them to take their clothes off and jump in the water.

"I thought that would be a good bonding experience for all of us, which it was. It was great fuel for ribbing and incessant bulls**ting with each other."

By Kate O'Hare
Zap2It.com
Sunday, May 22 2005