Meet the Other Others

With tomorrow's episode, "Confirmed Dead," focusing on the mysterious folks from Naomi's freighter, I figure it's as good a time as any to introduce you to the actors playing them - you can count on getting to know them quite a bit this season, after all. When they were first cast back in late August, Entertainment Weekly nabbed an interview with showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse about the actors; the quotes I use below are from that article.

Jeremy Davies
Character: Daniel Faraday
Best known for: Saving Private Ryan, Rescue Dawn, Ravenous

Known for playing squirreling sensitive guys in weird movies (he also appeared in the sadomasochism-happy Secretary and Lars Von Trier's Dogville), Davies achieved "hey-it's-that-guy" fame with Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. You should do yourself a favor and rent the barely-scene CQ, an odd comedy in which he plays a young director brought in to shoot a campy sci-fi movie in 1969 Paris.

Lindelof called his casting in Lost "one of those incredible opportunities. He's a guy who only does movies, and for him to do a part in our series, it was exciting. He's one of our favorite character actors." And according to Cuse, "He's usually the smartest guy in the room in any part he plays — that transformative quality, plus the tremendous intelligence that seems to emanate from him, sort of seemed perfect for this particular character."

Ken Leung
Character: Miles
Best known for: The Sopranos, X-Men: The Last Stand

A guy who's worked steadily in bit parts in movies and guest spots on TV shows, Leung played "Kid Omega" in the third X-Men (the guy who shot spikes out of his face like a porcupine) and Uncle Junior's mentally manic friend in one of the episodes of The Sopranos final season. Says Lindelof:

"The morning after his episode of The Sopranos aired, I said to Carlton, 'Have you seen that episode? There's an actor on this show — I'm not going to tell you who he is — and I wonder if he has the same impression on you that he had on me.' The next morning, Carlton came in and he had seen the episode and said, 'Ken Leung?' And I said, 'Bingo.' We were still [in post-production] on the finale when that aired, in mid-May, so we immediately did an outreach to his people, and we found out he was a New York actor, and that he was getting a lot of interest. So when we came back from our hiatus, we called and luckily he was available and interested. The part he's playing — it's a character we wrote very specifically for Ken. Nobody else read for it. It had to be him."

Jeff Fahey
Character: Frank Lapidus
Best known for: Grindhouse, The Lawnmower Man

A reliable B-movie actor, Fahey's appeared regularly in Westerns - like Silverado and Wyatt Earp - and movies that someone like Bruce Campbell would feel right at home in. "Fahey is one of those actors who feels like he fits into the Lost model," Lindelof says. "He's enormously talented and will be vaguely recognizable to some people, but he'll be able to land on our island without most people going, 'Oh, I know who that guy is.' And especially for the part we cast him for, he has exactly the right sensibilities."

There's also, apparently, a whole other side to Fahey: if his IMDb bio is to be trusted, he danced with NYC's Joffrey Ballet for three years. What's more, he created an orphanage in Kabul, Afghanistan. Seriously.

Rebecca Mader
Character: Charlotte
Best known for: Justice, Love Monkey, and about eighty other TV shows

A British actress, her character was originally written as an American but then changed once Lindelof and Cuse decided they liked her original accent. Hmm...differences in skin color aside, could this mean she's the "sister" that Naomi mentioned right before she died? "She won us over with her charm and presence and charisma," Cuse says. "People compare her to a young Nicole Kidman — she has that strength, beauty, effervescence, and accessibility.

And finally...

Lance Reddick
Character: Matthew Abaddon
Best known for: The Wire, Oz

We already met Reddick in the season premiere as the mysterious man who meets Hurley in his mental institution. There's no confirmation that he's aligned with the freighter crew yet, but he does appear in tomorrow's episode - and hopefully beyond that as well. In fact, Reddick was originally sought after for the role of Mr. Eko but couldn't accept it due to scheduling.

According to the casting information used during auditons, Abaddon was described as a "ruthless corporate recruiter" - possibly like Richard, the Other that recruited Juliet in her flashbacks last season. Explains Lindelof:

"Around here at the Lost offices, ''corporate recruiter'' means something entirely different than corporate recruiter. Let's just say that part of the character's skill set is coercion. If people are reading into that that he is an Other, or has the same job as Alpert, we would encourage that speculation, but we wouldn't confirm or deny it."

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Meet the Other Others

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