10 Years of Lost: Looking Back on the Series
IGN TV: Do you have perspective now on the legacy of Lost and what that meant to television, to you personally, what you've taken from Locke?Terry O'Quinn: Somebody asked me recently about how Lost sort of "made" television and took off. My immediate reaction to that was, I think Lost and other things like that blew it up. I don't think the formula...all of a sudden, there was no formula. There's no particular formula for Lost. I mean, I think there were a few attempts to follow it and copy it, but it's a one-off, you know? So I think it basically said, "Okay, all the rules have changed, but we don't know what they are." So it was a big deal to me personally simply for its own experience. It was a happy place to work. It was a happy set. We were all excited.
IGN: It was Hawaii!
O'Quinn: It was Hawaii! It was the first time in my whole career that I'd ever watched everything I did on screen. I watched it on television. I watched it on DVD. Before that, I'd never really been able to watch it happy and comfortably, but I like my character, and I liked my work. I like John Locke. I thought it was fun to watch. That was unique for me. IGN: Did you immediately feel that way with Lost, that sense of, "I like the show; I want to continue watching it"?
O'Quinn: No, not immediately, because I was so used to not liking it. You know, I think I probably weighed 20 pounds more when I started Lost. Then when I finished it, I probably weighed 30 pounds more. I was kind of out of shape. I hadn't worked in six months. But I watched it, and the character didn't do much. I didn't do much in the pilot, but I thought, "Well, everything else is so interesting!" The show itself was so interesting that I was able to unfocus on me a little bit and just watch the show. Then when I saw where they were putting my character -- and the stuff was so cool. They said, "Oh, did you know you were in a wheelchair?" I'm like, "What?" That was after the third episode.
5 Things We Learned at the Lost 10 Year Reunion
IGN: You didn't know?O'Quinn: I didn't even know. When they cast me, I didn't know I had been in a wheelchair. I don't know if they knew. [They didn't, we later heard showrunner Damon Lindelof explain that J.J. Abrams turned to him during production on Lost's pilot and pointed to O'Quinn, who was sitting in the wreckage of the plane quietly during a break, and said, "That man has a secret." When Lindelof asked what that secret was, Abrams replied, "That's up to you to figure out."]
O'Quinn (Continued): I liked being surprised... It's more interesting to operate from my own character's perception and know what he knows. They used to ask me, "Do you want to know where it's going?" I'd day, "Don't tell me where it's going, because I would just as soon be surprised. I'm going to know anyway when I get the script, but I don't want to start playing that in advance." I just want to play what I know. You can only play your history. You can't play your future. I like just playing my history.
IGN: That history, when it was revealed, was quite complex, yes? So how do you handle that?
O'Quinn: Yes. Well, then you say, "I should have been doing this all along. I should have been playing it this way." It was like that one example in Lost. There was a scene they shot where, early on, Locke wakes up from the plane crash, wiggles his toes and stands up. Then he runs and helps Jack pull someone up. Well, I didn't know at that time I was supposed to be in a wheelchair. I would have run differently had I known that. But in the end, I let the audience handle those problems. It's kind of like, "Well, what if your history turns up later?" That means you would have -- I mean, the writers, that's their problem... If it's in the script I do it. If it's not, I don't worry about it. IGN: There was this central question in Lost that dealt with faith. That was Locke's primary function for a bulk of the series, to represent this crisis of faith and then steadfast faith. I'm curious if any of that fed into your own life?
O'Quinn: You know, when you're examining those questions and your performance and you're preparing, you have to look at those questions. I always said -- even though Damon Lindelof, the writer, said Locke was a man of faith and that Jack was a man of science -- I always said Locke was a man in search of faith. He's deeply wanting to have something that he can believe in and hold onto. Maybe he was grabbing onto the wrong things. But I think in him, you know, I looked at my parents, being Irish Catholic, my dad, all of that. I think sometimes you can grow up with it, or if you're just the kind of animal who grabs onto it or doesn't grab onto it. I wasn't a big grabbing-onto-it kind of animal. I found my faith to be more about my belief, my spirituality, about nature. Now, when I'm in LA and there's not that kind of nature I like to see around me, it's when I go to work and if I'm working with people I'm happy to work with. I find joy in that. That's a reward, and it's kind of spiritual. It's very satisfying. Take it where you can get it. IGN: It's interesting that you say that about Locke, because I saw him that was as well. He seemed to be operating almost entirely from a wound. To me, his entire life's function was healing that childhood wound. And he so badly wanted to believe there was a purpose to all that pain.
O'Quinn: Well, I think when you first saw John Locke, as far back as his history goes, you saw him working at a Walmart, in the toy section, selling toys. He seemed pretty happy. He seemed like a pretty happy guy, and that was the only time you saw him very happy. After that, he was being bossed around by his boss, and he was in a wheelchair, all of that stuff. But I think when his mother walked in and she said, "You have this life, and this is your father," blah, blah, blah -- and, "By the way, you were born of a virgin birth" [Laughs] -- all of a sudden, it awoke in him this monster that wanted to be somebody. Then you find out more and more that he is something really special, and that is what he wanted to be. It reflects the day and age we live in. Things like Facebook and Twitter, all that stuff, are about, "I'm here! Here I am! I'm somebody special!" Roth Cornet is an Entertainment Editor for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @RothCornet and IGN at Roth-IGN.
