Vanity Fair publishes Maureen Ryan’s expose on toxic production of “Lost”

Link if you've reached your article limit.

“Cosmetic diversity” was pretty common in the Aughts, not saying its right, of course it’s not right, but it seems that there’s some resentment at the four central characters being white. I mean those kind of things are just the way broadcast networks operated back then, the central characters were almost always white. Lost would be unable to meet today’s standards of equity but those standards were just accepted back then.

I mean look at the Superhero movies, the Marvel movies hatched in the Aughts were overwhelmingly white but began embracing diversity in the teens. People are maybe forgetting the seismic effect that the election of Barrack Obama had on how people perceived diversity. Even Democrats didn’t think anything wrong with the white male doublebill Kerry/Edwards ticket in 04.

Another crybaby.

Just finished reading the whole thing, that ending is quite remarkable. It's not (just) a classic exposé, it's also an honest conversation with those who did the damage. At least one of them, that is; Cuse is obviously a lost cause.

To those like r4 who dismiss non-white employees as just perpetual complainers, your mentality is part of the problem. Them offering input just like white people do and speaking up when encountering obvious racism should not be perceived as whining. And if there had been a main gay character in Lost -- which, perish the thought! -- we would 100% have former gay writers speaking out about homophobia in this piece as well.

I'll just add this. Earlier this month, I was listening to a podcast interview with Lindeloff and the co-creator of Mrs. Davis, Tara Hernandez, and my alarm bells went off immediately. I noticed she was performing the sort of bro humour that Lindeloff loves so much and which is described in this article. She was quite obviously using it as a strategy of appeasement and I felt so bad for her, having to bend over backwards in order to get along with that narcissist.

I was a [italic]Lost[/italic] fan and vaguely remember Perrrineau's departure as being caused by his being a problem employee, whining about racism, not worth the trouble. I was surprised to see him cast in another project, then another. I figured maybe the problem wasn't with Perrineau. But I had no other indication of flagrant racism behind the scenes. Man, this sucks.

Was The Cosby Show toxic because the cast was all black? How about The Fresh Prince of Bel Air? Not much diversity on that show either. Both should be remade with an equal amount of black, white, hispanic, arab and asian actors? No, only all white shows are racisssss.

R7 Hmm, I wonder why you might be THIS bent out of shape.

Walt!!!!!!!!!!!!

I mean I am sure they were racist about a lot of things, but the central characters were just four white people. The show revolved around the central characters. If they had cast a minority in one of the leads, then there would have been no problem. But casting is not always determined by the creators or the showrunners. The network has a very big say in casting. It’s entirely likely the network may have wanted all the leads to be caucasian. That’s just how show business was back then. It probably still is. Perrineau seems to be of the idea that everyone was cast on an equality basis. It was fairly obvious that Jack, Kate, Sawyer and Locke were the stars early on. And minorities were used to “fill out”. That’s not seen as acceptable today, but back then it was progressive.

The photo at the op could ignite several “why did [——] career did gown down the shitter’ threads.

Matthew Fox’s career basically self destructed after Dominic Monaghan accused him on Twitter of being a wifebeater.

Another rather color and identity focused article so far, not sure if I'm interested in continuing.

I thought it was very important to let everyone know about my ambivalence. I'll keep you posted

Isn't this really old news? I seem to remember Daniel Dae Kim, Yunjin Kim and Naveen Andrews all talking about this before.

As much as I love Lost(first 4 seasons) the main characters were replaceable to me, with Locke being an obvious exception. It was the supporting staff that made the show. Ben Linus is the greatest villain and tv character in all of television history.

The very white Ian Somerhalder was the first main character to be killed off. He was exquisitely beautiful and I mourned his passing.

Even as the show was airing and was a hit, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse came across as douche bros in virtually every interview I saw.

Not at all surprised to read about the toxic environment they created on that set and in the writers room.

Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Deadline and Entertainment Weekly all now have stories about the toxic Lost production, all posted within the last two hours.

Here's the Variety story.

Here's the Deadline story.

They all have articles because this is promotion for the book coming out next week.

Kind of a depressing read. I loved Lost back in the day. I imagine this kind of behaviour is sadly not uncommon behind the scenes in Hollywood. Tbh it only takes one bad egg in a position of any power to create a toxic workplace.

I don't see anything wrong with this behavior.

For a minute reading this I confused Lindelof & Cuse with the Game of Thrones guys, who wanted to put out that show Confederate about slavery never getting repealed, and shuddered

Reports like this are important - it's important we look back at toxic behavior and see it for what it was. It doesn't "ruin" the show if you liked the show. I can still watch Buffy even though I know Joss Whedon was a dick.

But this is how we move forward as a society, and hopefully people will be less asshole-ish in the future because this behavior's now been called out. How that could be a bad thing I have no idea

That said the final season of Lost was such a garbage fire I've never had any desire to re-watch this show anyway

Final season was so bad, it unfortunately tainted my view of the previous five seasons that I enjoyed at the time.

I never made it past season 2 of Lost but the Kate-Jack-Sawyer characters were always the least interesting to me. Sad but not surprising Matthew Fox turned out to be an asshole. At the time Lost hit big the manager of my local 7-11 said Josh Holloway had been a regular customer there as he was trying to get work in Hollywood and was a super nice guy. She seemed genuinely happy for his success.

The should remaster the show and and use CGI an AI to change character story arcs to suit 2020s demands. They can insert additional characters played by Jussie Smollett and Awkwafina. The producers need to pay reparations reducing their fortunes gained by this evil and cynical production, an agent of racist hegemony. HOW VERY DARE THEY!!! It's literal trans genocide.

R26 Yawn. Your schtick is becoming as old as Hillary’s emails. Get a new gig.

Mo Ryan is a really good writer and she's broken a few stories of toxic shows, including Jeff Garlin on the Goldbergs.

She was also sexually assaulted by a network chief at some point....

Looking forward to her book.

Lol I already have R26 blocked for obvious reasons but whoo boy is it crazy to get a glimpse into a diseased deplorable mind!

I’m in a field where you would be hard-pressed to find alphas at any level, but there is no way those in charge could get away with such behavior towards me and my coworkers. You wonder how brave and intelligent these people really are if they are all so terrified of retribution.

I will just never understand the joy that people take when acting so cruelly.

[quote]I will just never understand the joy that people take when acting so cruelly.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I wanted Sawyer, too bad the actor couldn't parlay his Lost popularity into other roles

The Michael character "My Boy!" "Waaaalt!" was annoying AF which didn't help matters for Perrineau.

I got nostalgic reading this article and thread so I’m rewatching the series. On episode 2 now. I loved seasons 1-4 or so, not sure if I remember much about the ending seasons, other than a feeling of WTF.

What a great article.

[quote] The very white Ian Somerhalder

Ian Somerhalder is blue-eyed and fair skinned, but he's never made a secret of being indigenous; his grandmother was a pure blooded member of the Choctaw tribe, and he spent some of his childhood on her reservation.

When did it begin to suck? It wasn't just the final terrible year. The rot had set in long before, but I'm not sure where to put my thumb on the slippery slope. I'm only certain that the first two seasons were utterly fantastic

They did the character of John Locke so dirty in the last season. I was a huge fan of the show, watched every week and went online to discuss it. But the ending of the show ticked me off so much I won't even watch reruns.

R32, Josh Holloway has hardly ever not been in work.

if you read the article, its mainly about the toxic work environment writers had to put up with. 20 yrs ago those writers rooms were like frat houses and disgusting, racially charged jokes were frequent. Few women could tolerate it and those who wrote well anyway were treated like shit. And if you didnt like it, you couldn't take a joke or weren't strong enough to be part of the team--hazing, essentially. And since only toxic people could tolerate those enviromments, after a few decades, that's all you're left with.

I'm so curious, BUT I don't think that I'm gonna read it. It's just gonna ruin it for me. Wish I had done this with Buffy. I knew it was a toxic set but not the extent of toxicity until recently. MAN....it just doesn't feel the same when I watch it now.

The book is about several shows, not just Lost.

She was also the person if I remember correctly that interviewed Jeff Garlin and broke the story that eventually got him fired.....

[quote]When did it begin to suck?

When was the Bai Ling episode? I feel like the monumentally terrible Bai Ling episode really snapped everybody back to reality

All those ABC shows that all became huge hits at the same time were all messes behind the scenes. I think part of it was Steve McPherson, the network chief. Will be interesting to see if Maureen mentions him in the book.

Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy and Lost all had initial success, and then the writing got way up its own ass AND all sorts of shit went down behind the scenes.

[quote] When did it begin to suck?

The excerpt answers that question: season 2 is when it started to unravel and when people started to quit.

R44 Grey’s Anatomy- There were some faggots in that cast.

The whole middle part of the series it really felt like they started spinning their wheels and didn't know how long they were going to have to draw the mysteries out for. Lost would've been a better show for the ways shows are built now, with limited episodes and endings in sight

[quote]People are maybe forgetting the seismic effect that the election of Barrack Obama

The man was president for eight years and you still can't spell his name?

Michaela Coel experienced much of the same as Perrineau early on her career prior to I May Destroy You. Her MacTaggart lecture is excellent.

It’s difficult to talk about anything to do with how racial issues are affecting your work to superiors of another race without them feeling victimised and becoming defensive about potential accusations of racism directed at themselves rather than listening and trying to understand the problem (which likely has nothing to do with a specific “racist” act they have committed).

And it’s hard to discuss it without sounding like a Roxane Gay mimic.

So Coel would be ultra careful with her language and not say things like “racist” or “problematic” in favour of gentler terms like “insensitive” or “tricky” or “questionable”.

R44 people forget how different network television was from now

Now a 10 episode season is completed in its entirety before streaming, and it’s released all at once

22-episode Network television had seasons in production while the current season was airing, and the network would constantly interfere, and there would be real-time feedback from the public and from advertisers over what they want to see

Completely different world

If anyone thinks these writers are snowflakes for being upset at hearing terribly racists things said in their presence (and an Asian writer being called “Korean”), imagine being in an office where your boss routinely made lisping “jokes” about gays and called you “Gay Boy.”

Good piece and a good reminder that most writers don’t color outside the lines even if they think they do. I loved this:

“Two years of what could be called the “Tallahassee mentality” was enough for him. The term comes from characters on the show poking fun at the Florida city. One day, the Lost offices got a letter from the mayor of Tallahassee, who gamely invited the show’s personnel to visit and enclosed brochures touting the city’s attractive qualities. “In response, Damon told the writers room to double down on Tallahassee, and when asked why, he replied with a straight face that the only thing funnier than punching someone in the face for no reason is punching them harder when they ask why,” Grillo-Marxuach said. “If you can imagine that as a management philosophy, you can understand what it was like to work on Lost.”

Maybe you just weren't compelling enough to be the star of the show.

Damon Lindelof’s Star Wars project was shut down in April

They knew the exposé was coming!

R50 So true. I also think the aspect of being network tv hurt Lost in the long run. They had to start making it up as they went along to fill episode requirements.

R51 wow where did you work. That seems very very outrageous anywhere in the country post 2000.

I’m still rewatching, but at this point I’m skipping the episodes that are primarily about Jack, Kate, Locke, Sawyer…mainly because I had grown to mostly hate all of them by the end. I just watched the first episode that was about Sun. I had forgotten that she was pretty much my favorite character.

It’s a shame that Mathew Fox is a POS, because DAMN he was hot in this.

Carlton Cruse is Trump-level evil.

The show was quite diverse and would fulfill the equity criteria of today.

At least in MY experience, most of these hour-long dramas start to lose steam around S3 (aka the season the creator moves on to bigger projects $$$). There are a few exceptions tho.

No wonder these shows go to shit when writers are treated this way.

That’s an excellent point r61

Maybe that was the real reason Lost went down the shitter. They scared off the good talent.

That’s when ALIAS went down the tubes, r60.

Hour long network shows are a nightmare to film and suck the life out of everyone involved.

And in those years when ABC was flying high, they'd order as many as 24-25 episodes. Each one took 8-9 days to film. Which basically meant 10-11 months of working 6 days a week, 14 to 18 hours a day.

The high turnover on “ER” was attributed to the brutal production schedule.

I didn’t watch Lost but I feel the fans who don’t want the showrunner’s dickishness to affect their viewing pleasure of Lost or Buffy. Cast them from your mind. Remember a lot of other people worked really hard to make these shows. They still have value and you don’t need to take on the guilt Lindehof and Cuse should feel.

I loved Bates Motel which was a Cuse production but Kerry Ehrin produced it too, and she doesn’t have a bad reputation.

My issues with all of these shows is that by the time the show is sold to the networks and in production the first season has been clearly mapped out for some time but then they have to scramble to get subsequent seasons going and storylines and characterizations always suffer. Lost, Desperate Housewives, Revenge - all had incredible first seasons and then went to shit in season two and never really recovered. Lost did better than the other two but there was a clear decline from season 1 and I gave up on all of them long before they finally ended their runs.

LOST was doomed from the moment they had a polar bear running through the jungle, because they had a fandom that insisted on creating logical theories to explain the mysteries but there is biologically, physically no way to explain how a polar bear can survive for one minute in a tropical climate other than “magic”. So they wrote all these mystery arcs to please the fans only to have the ultimate answer to all of them be “magic”. They backed themselves into that corner early on and never got out of it, because they never actually had a plan for the endgame.

I know others will disagree for sure but as far as losing steam I feel like West Wing stayed pretty consistent even after losing its creator.

DH did have a shit season 2. It was much better in years 3 and 4 and sort of kept things going for a while, but when they went back to the Paul Young stuff and Katherine started eating box it really went off the rails.

That's about the time they also started separating Teri Snatchers from the rest of the cast.....as well as when they fired Nicolette.

I'm surprised Amy Sherman Cuntadino and her husband aren't in this book.

They’re decent people so no. It’s just your warped mind that has turned them into villains because you’re not into their shows.

R72 LMAO. Hilarious.

For fuck's sake, even the god damn polar bear was white - racist motherfuckers!

[Quote] 20 yrs ago those writers rooms were like frat houses and disgusting, racially charged jokes were frequent. Few women could tolerate it and those who wrote well anyway were treated like shit.

Reminds me of One Tree Hill and how the creator wanted a hot tub in the writers room. Just fucking ridiculous.

[Quote] The very white Ian Somerhalder was the first main character to be killed off. He was exquisitely beautiful and I mourned his passing.

I think the rumour was Ian got killed off for sleeping with a producer's daughter. He obviously managed to land on his feet again with The Vampire Diaries.

[Quote] Them offering input just like white people do and speaking up when encountering obvious racism should not be perceived as whining.

You shouldn't even have to explain this. The disgusting jokes about Adewale and his character getting lynched is beyond fucked up.

R75 Ian was sleeping with Maggie Grace who played his incestuous step sister. The storyline didn't land well at the time and the producers weren't happy about the fraternizing, so they killed (heh) two birds with one stone and kicked him off the island on and off screen. The rumor was she put up a huge fuss about it. Her character was killed off a few episodes later.

R68: That’s so true. The island’s electromagnetism was their answer for pretty much everything.

I read this book and it was really well done and well researched.

It gets a wee bit repetitive at the end as well as unrealistic (not sure how much anyone is willing to change and the ones with all the money make the rules).

I never finished watching Lost.

So the island was a version of purgatory/limbo, right?

Did we ever find out what the numbers from the hatch meant?

I'm not 'American,' but I follow U.S. politics and entertainment and have been posting occasionally since last autumn.

Just have to get this off my chest to actual U.S. liberals...

So sick of this woke bullshit. just a bunch of whiners with victim complexes. Mainly women and blacks.

That's all they ever do.

They vilify white men, but they are the true masters behind the U.S. entertainment industry (writers, directors, composers, lyricists, cinematographers, editors, etc.).

Without white men at the helm, Hollywood and Broadway will go down the shitter.

You can already tell the difference within the past 5 years (post #MeToo and George Floyd) since a lot of women and blacks have gained powerful positions. A lot of the U.S. content has gotten shitty.

And it looks like it's going to get worse for years to come, because California and New York intend to double down on woke culture/politics, which will be their undoing.

Far-left societies eventually destroy themselves.

That is why I'm rooting for Republicans. They want to preserve the 'America' we all know and have loved.

Democrats want to destroy it from the looks of it.

R80: I think the significance of the numbers was that each number represented the number of degrees Jacob had to turn the sundial in the tower in order to find candidates for his replacement. The numbers were a recurring theme throughout the show such as Flight 815 and the sum of the all numbers being 108, which was the number of days before the Oceanic Six found rescue.

R10, I think they just simplistically assumed that is how they would attract the biggest audience as Caucasians made up most of the population.

I am curious how teachers or employers discipline a person of color or even a woman now because I would think you would be leery of being accused of being racist or of sexual harassment.

Season 1 was without a doubt its best season. The pilot episode is probably the greatest pilot ever made. I know a lot people say it went down hill after that but I didn't mind the earlier seasons. I think it started going the shitter with seasons 5 and 6 and all that time travel shit.

Take a good look at r81, folks; it's rare to see a mutant with missing chromosomes who ought to be thrown screaming from a helicopter in public.

r85 I agree, I loved the first few seasons but they screwed up the last 2 seasons with the Man In Black time travel bullshit.

I did not care for a lot of season 2. The stories and characters of the new characters from the back of the plane did not really work.

I thought it got back on track the second part of season 3 and season 4. Season 5 was pretty decent until the end and the time travel, and then it never really recovered. The finale was flawed, but there were a few moments that were effective. By that point, I knew they had made a mess of it and had low expectations for the end.

It might be one of the last network shows that really was water cooler talk the morning after a new episode.

R88: Yeah Ana Lucia was a fucking bitch that everybody hated and they wisely killed her off. Season 2 definitely raised too many questions and didn't provide enough answers. The first part of season 3 was pretty bad but then it got back on track with the second part like you said. It definitely went off the rails with the time travel in season 5 and the purgatory or afterlife timeline in season 6. I can see why some found the series finale polarizing but it wasn't that bad and I thought it wrapped mostly everything up satisfactorily.

[quote]I'm not 'American,'

Okay, then you can shut up. No actual American is interested in your take on our politics or culture.

R56 What happened in 2000?

[quote]It’s a shame that Mathew Fox is a POS, because DAMN he was hot in this.

I've always liked Fox's acting. He was the class of the joint on Party of Five, and he still held his own with a stronger overall cast (e.g., Terry O'Quinn, Naveen Edwards, etc.) on Lost. He didn't even embarrass himself playing a retarded man in that TV-movie with Donald Sutherland as his doctor.

Among other things, he's just about the best male crier I've ever seen.

Is he actually a piece of shit, though? I know that Dominic Monaghan alleged that, but I don't know if there was anything substantive to back it up. And then Monaghan about a year later was outed as someone who harassed women, so I don't know if he's a reliable source. Whatever the case, I wasn't sorry to see Monaghan exiting Lost, because his character was one of the weakest links. "I'm a bloody rock god!"

[quote]Ana Lucia was a fucking bitch that everybody hated and they wisely killed her off.

I loved Ana Lucia, personally. The episode with the murders of Ana Lucia and Libby was great television for the shock factor, but I was really bummed about it at the time. I thought they both had a lot of potential, and the flashbacks had set up stories for them that then never went anywhere.

[quote]Naveen Edwards

Naveen Andrews. Sorry.