Michael Emerson Chats About Finale

I love Michael Emerson interviews. Maybe even more than I like Ben. See, Ben fascinates me in a keep-your-distance-please kind of way. But I would totally have Michael Emerson over for dinner (as a guest, not the main course. Just to clarify).

TV Guide has an interview with Emerson, who so carefully teases the finale. He also confirms my hunch that the writers don't always know where they're headed when they start developing characters.

TVGuide.com: Give me three words to describe the season finale.
Michael Emerson: [Thinks] Dark. Violent. Casualties.

TVGuide.com: About a year ago, you and I spoke about how Ben was loath to ever leave the island. And yet we've now seen that it is something that does happen. What do you think changed there?
Ben's attachment to the island was... provisional. He's always been able to leave it. But now there's some question of him maybe having to abandon it – and that's as a result of developments in this last season.

TVGuide.com: So it's always been there as an option, but it's only recently that he has chosen to avail himself of it.
I think so, yes. Things have gone so... wrong. Events have forced his hand in a number of ways. And John Locke appears to have been "anointed" somehow.

TVGuide.com: Ben appears to be making some sort of peace with that shift.
Yes. His gut reaction is that of a teenage boy, which is to be vengeful and full of rage and bitterness. But eventually, he will always play the board as it is in front of him. He will accept the terms.

TVGuide.com: "Whatever makes Jacob happy."
Exactly.

TVGuide.com: When you first were pitched this role, did they give you any hint as to the scope of Ben's involvement in the mythology?
No. I doubt if they even knew it at that time! As far as I knew, it was to be three episodes. I think it was an experiment, one that worked out happily.

TVGuide.com: They’ve told me that the same thing happened with Nestor Carbonell. They didn’t have any "grand plan" for Richard Alpert, but once he became available, they said, "We could do something here."
Yeah... And he's a great character. It makes my mouth water to think what they could do with Richard Alpert.

Oh, and then THIS was brought to our attention. How did I miss this?!

TVGuide.com: Are we to make anything of the fact that both Ben's mother and Locke's mother were named Emily? Well, that very idea occurred to me last week — and I'm usually the slowest on the uptake with those kinds of clues. I thought, "Hmm, let's hold onto that." They don’t make those kinds of accidents. The guys who write Lost are very careful about names. [Laughs]

Craziness.

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TAGS: Finale, Interview, Preview
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