Excerpt From New Book Alleges Toxic Environment Behind The Scenes Of ‘Lost’

Vanity Fair has published an excerpt from a new book examining Hollywood’s corrosive culture rips the lid off “Lost”, revealing a shocking pattern of toxic behaviour behind the scenes of the hit series.

In a chapter from the upcoming book Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood, Vanity Fair contributor Maureen Ryan spoke with writers and cast members across all six seasons, including cast member Harold Perrineau and writer Monica Owusu-Breen, both of whom are Black.

According to a “Lost” writer, members of the writing staff were instructed to focus on the “hero characters,” who were Locke (Terry O’Quinn), Jack (Matthew Fox), Kate (Evangeline Lilly) and Sawyer (Josh Holloway) — all white characters. When Perrineau questioned his character’s storyline in relation to the white characters, he claimed that a “Lost” producer told him, “Well, this is just how audiences follow stories,” and those characters were “relatable.” That led Perrineau to ask why were white people were relatable, and his wasn’t.

Perrineau also pointed to the storyline in which Walt, the son of his character, Michael, is kidnapped, with that episode’s flashbacks focusing on Sawyer, while Michael doesn’t mention his son.

“I don’t think I can do that,” Perrineau recalled feeling at the time. “I can’t be another person who doesn’t care about missing Black boys, even in the context of fiction, right? This is just furthering the narrative that nobody cares about Black boys, even Black fathers.”

According to Perrineau, he shared his concerns with “Lost” showrunner Damon Lindelof and executive producer Carlton Cuse. Weeks before filming was set to begin on the Season 2 finale, Perrineau said he was informed by Cuse that his character was being written out of the show.

Multiple sources claim that when Lindelof was asked about Perrineau’s exit from the show, he said that the actor “called me racist, so I fired his a**.”

“What can I say? Other than it breaks my heart that that was Harold’s experience,” said Lindelof when told of his remark. According to Lindelof, he had no recollection of “ever” stating that. “And I’ll just cede that the events that you’re describing happened 17 years ago, and I don’t know why anybody would make that up about me.”

Meanwhile, Owusu-Breen alleges that racist remarks were common in the writers’ room.

“It was very much middle school and relentlessly cruel. And I’ve never heard that much racist commentary in one room in my career,” recalled Owusu-Breen, who worked on the series’ third season. One example she cited occurred when a member of staff was adopting an Asian child, and someone remarked that “no grandparent wants a slanty-eyed grandchild.” Owusu-Breen also recalled that when actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s photo appeared on a table in the writers’ room, someone jokingly told one of the writers to remove a nearby wallet “before he steals it.”

“There was so much s***, and so much racist s***, and then laughter,” Owusu-Breen said. “It was ugly. I was like, ‘I don’t know if they’re perceiving this as a joke or if they mean it.’ But it wasn’t funny. Saying that was horrible.” She began leaving the room when she couldn’t take it anymore: “I’m like, once you’re done talking s*** about people of colour, I’ll come back.”

Cuse told Ryan that he never witnessed any of the behaviour Owusu-Breen alleged. “I deeply regret that anyone at ‘Lost’ would have to hear them,” he said. “They are highly insensitive, inappropriate, and offensive.”

Addressing allegations of a toxic work environment, Lindelof said, “My level of fundamental inexperience as a manager and a boss, my role as someone who was supposed to model a climate of creative danger and risk-taking but provide safety and comfort inside of the creative process – I failed in that endeavour.”