Every so often a series with the label of the new ‘Lost’ is released on television or on some other platform. Right now the title seems to hold it ‘From’, the mystery drama whose season 2 is airing weekly on HBO Max.
A perception of “heir” to the iconic drama of the two thousand that is coming, especially due to the similarities in that it tells the story of a diverse group stranded and surviving as best they can in a town that is a whole opaque box of mysteries. Furthermore, having Harold Perrineau helps reinforce this perception.
And it is that Perrineau, who in the new series plays the “de facto” mayor of this town, He was part of the original and regular cast of ‘Lost’ as Michael during its first two seasons. Until he was fired for, shall we say, creative differences with Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse and company.
The actor made it to the cast of ‘Lost’ as one of the most experienced actors of the cast: he was one of the protagonists of ‘Oz’ and we also saw him in the Matrix sequels and in ‘Romeo + Juliet‘. With great enthusiasm, a general disenchantment soon arrived.
“The Black” from “Lost”
“It became clear that I was the black guy. Daniel [Dae Kim] he was the asian guy. And then you have Jack, Kate and Sawyer.”declares the actor in ‘Burn it Down’, the just published book by Maureen Ryan. However, the complaints were not so much about screen time (and, also, cache issues) but about the treatment of characters and what ABC considered a character with whom one could identify or not.
Perrineau claims to have spoken to the producers and writers about it, but their responses were, discouraging to say the least. Michael’s character is, in fact, one of the least developed in those early seasons. He was, indeed, “the black” of the series, with the feeling of being about to be.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was script for the second episode of season 2. The season 1 finale ended with the Others kidnapping Walt, Michael’s son played by Malcolm David Kelley. In the original script of ‘Adrift‘ (Adrift), after being pulled from the wreckage of the raft by Sawyer (Josh Holloway), Michael asks about his son. Just one time:
Michael asks Sawyer about his past, about how he feels, but he never mentions Walt again. I don’t think he can do that. I can’t be another person who doesn’t care about the disappearance of black children, even in the context of fiction. This just feeds the narrative that nobody cares about black kids, nor about black parents.”
He didn’t hesitate to go talk to his bosses, even knowing the risks. Neither Damon Lindelof nor Carlton Cuse were for the job to discuss the subject and were reluctant to add an extra line or two to show Michael’s concern for his son.
The episode, which was originally going to focus on Sawyer’s past, including flashbacks about Michael, was eventually revised. Some flashbacks that Perrineau had to shoot against the clockin marathon days of 14 and 18 hours over two days when it normally takes a few more days.
A way out the back door
Weeks later, before starting work on the season finale, Carlton Cuse approached Perrineau to tell him that his character would not return in Season 3. Something followed by a nasty conversation:
“I was pissed off about it. There was “Oh, I just got fired I think”; “Wait a minute, what’s going on?” [Cuse] He said “Well, you know, you told us, that if we didn’t have anything good for you, you wanted to go” I was just asking for equal depth. [Cuse responde] “Well, you said you didn’t have enough work here so we let you go.”
Although in that season 2 finale we would see him take a boat and leave with his son, that would not be the last time we would see him. In season 4 we would see him sporadically with her life in New York, traumatized by what happened on the islandand with his son Walt living with his grandmother.
Quite a cliché of the African-American community. For Perrineau, another failure of the series was precisely the one that his character did not have a moment of reconnection with his son once off the island:
“Look, to be honest, there are a lot of questions about how they respond to black people on the show. Sayid sees Nadia again, Desmond and Penny go out again, but a little black guy and his dad hooking up…isn’t that interesting? Instead, Walt ends up just another kid without a father. He fits a big, weird stereotype, and as a black person, that wasn’t interesting.”
In Espinof | Why it is worth watching ‘Lost’ (‘Lost’): without this series, 21st century television is not understood