In a new book, Lost co-creator and showrunner Damon Lindelof responds to allegations that the series had a toxic working environment, admitting that he “failed” to “provide safety and comfort” to the actors and writers on the show.
Vanity Fair published an excerpt from Maureen Ryan’s Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood, scheduled for publication next Tuesday by Mariner, in which cast and crew spoke about their experiences working on the hit ABC show that ran from 2004 to 2010. A critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “Ryan has the experience and insight to explore Hollywood’s dark underbelly, and she finds plenty of monsters.”
Monica Owusu-Breen, who wrote for the third season of Lost, told Ryan, “All I wanted to do was write some really cool episodes of a cool show. That was an impossibility on that staff. There was no way to navigate that situation. Part of it was they really didn’t like their characters of color.”
Harold Perrineau, who played Michael Dawson on the show, said he raised concerns about the way characters of color were portrayed on the show and was later told his character wouldn’t be returning to the series.
“I was fucked up about it. I was like, ‘Oh, I just got fired, I think,’” Perrineau said. “I was just asking for equal depth.”
Owusu-Breen claimed that Lost’s other showrunner, Carlton Cuse, at one point discussed how the character Mr. Eko, played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, should die.
“Carlton said something to the effect of, ‘I want to hang him from the highest tree. God, if we could only cut his dick off and shove it down his throat,’” according to Owusu-Breen. “At which point I said, ‘You may want to temper the lynching imagery, lest you offend.’ And I was very clearly angry.”
Cuse told Ryan that he never made that comment. Lindelof, asked about the show’s atmosphere, said, “My level of fundamental inexperience as a manager and a boss, my role as someone who was supposed to model a climate of creative danger and risk-taking but provide safety and comfort inside of the creative process—I failed in that endeavor.”
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
