Extensive Interview with Michael Emerson

There's a great new interview with Michael Emerson, a.k.a. Ben Linus, on Ain't it Cool News. It's quite long and I recommend reading the whole thing, but here are some of Emerson's highlights:

It’s interesting though how with each season on the show, the lens through which we do the story, pulls back a little further and includes more territory and more characters, so that the show… I don’t know if they ever actually meant it to be just about survivors on an island. I know a lot of people complain that they have sort of lost that first season blush on the show, but I don’t think they ever meant to stay there. I think that was just one look of many that and that the story was going to grow up and out and away from that.

We are not dealing with the kind of story that has a trite ending, this is going to be a thing more for grown ups and more about imperfect endings and things with regret; things left undone and unsaid, that kind of stuff.

When people say they never give any [secrets] up, that’s just wrong, they give up something every episode and then of course new questions take their place, but I think that that’s what is fun about the show.

Let’s say that Ben was able to manipulate the smoke monster, but on the show everything is a binary system, everything is in balance, morally balanced or economically balanced, so for Ben to make a thing happen like that, there is also a price, I think, that he had to pay. We don’t know what Ben paid yet to make the smoke monster come. We don’t know that he… “Is he allowed to do that?” and everyone who has power also pays a price. John Locke is going to pay a price. Ben has paid a price.

On Alex's death:

Yeah, it was shocking and for Ben, he is never fully caught off guard, he’s never flummoxed or shocked really, but clearly something went very wrong and against every expectation in that moment and now he has sort of been shattered in a way. I don’t know how he is going to pull himself together exactly, but it was sweetly played by Tania Raymonde and I will miss her so much; quite afar from us having a fictional relationship, I also just like her very much as a person and have loved working with her. I do feel a fatherly sadness at her going away and not continuing to be on the show.

And on the end of Season 4:

On May the seventh, I will go to the studio and there will be scenes that no one has ever seen and we will shoot them that day and they will rush them to LA and they will cut them and those will be the final moments of the season.

TAGS: Alex, Ben, Interview, Michael Emerson
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