Depart ure Time
Major players in the post- rapture world
CHIEF CONCERNS
1 For the police chief and head of a broken household, Lindelof says, “You need a guy who exudes a certain level of coolness, but when he’s not around other people you really see the weight of the world on his shoulders and an incredible vulnerability. I think the really exciting thing about Justin is that the majority of his acting work over the course of the last ten years has been comedic, but he’s a great dramatic actor back from Mulholland Drive and other things.”
JAM ISON’S RISK Y
2 Played by an Americanaccented Christopher Eccleston, Lindelof says Matt Jamison represents the religious side of the show. “In the book, Matt is a guy who looks at the Departure as a way to divorce himself from religion. But as Chris and I talked about the character, we felt that another interesting way to go was for him to double- down because that’s what people do. Chris is an amazing actor and I’m looking forward to people’s responses to Matt.”
ENJOY THE SILENCE
3 The GRs are a silent cult of people who only wear white and don’t speak. They tend to show up at public events unnerving everyone. Lindelof says crafting them “has been very, very hard. As a writer, there’s no getting around having characters in a scene where they don’t get to do the one thing we do for them, which is write their words for them. Essentially, there has to be a complete and total minimum of words. Poor Amy Brenneman is like, ‘ When do I get to talk?’”
THE CABLE GUYS
Having spent years in the more conservative network TV arena, Lindelof says writing for HBO, the cable home of True Blood and Game Of Thrones, has been liberating. “It’s really nice to curse. There’s many times on the Island where you would want a character to say shit or drop an F- bomb, but we’re trying to not get too carried away [ here]. There are opportunities to get down and dirty but I never want to get gratuitous. The show isn’t about graphic sex or violence necessarily.”