Elizabeth Mitchell Interview about "V" and "Lost"

Temporarily nixed from island series, Elizabeth Mitchell falls for new sci-fi role

‘Lost’ and found
By Amy Amatangelo
Thursday, August 27, 2009

Elizabeth Mitchell didn’t expect to fall in love again. At least not so soon.

Last spring, “Lost” executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse told Mitchell that her character, Juliet, would not be a part of the final season of ABC’s Emmy-winning series.

“I was really sad because I really like everyone so much and I love my role,” Mitchell said in an interview earlier this month at the Langham Hotel in Pasadena, Calif. “I spent three years working very hard to create exactly what I wanted.”

But the Dallas native described herself as “fairly pragmatic.” She thanked Lindelof and Cuse for her time on the series, packed up her house in Hawaii, found a preschool for her son in Los Angeles and began reading scripts.
“I didn’t expect to like anything,” she said. “I was just reading things because people sent them to me and it’s rude not to read them.”

Then she read the script for “V,” a remake of the 1983 sci-fi miniseries about an alien invasion. The series premieres on ABC in November.

“ ‘V’ is kind of a gift,” the 39-year-old said. “It was a surprise to me to fall in love with another character. I read it and it captivated me. And more importantly, I thought it was an excellent jumping-off place and something I had never done before - playing a straightforward hero.”

Mitchell plays FBI counterterrorist agent Erica Evans, a mother of a teenage son. In the pilot, she discovers that the alien visitors might not be as benevolent as they seem.

“What I’m enjoying about Erica, which is one of the same things I love about Juliet, is that she, every day of her life, believes if she is not fully on, not fully functioning, she is going to let people down and the world will come to an end. She actively puts herself in the line of fire. I think it takes a special kind of person to do that, and that, combined with Erica being a mother, is very interesting to me.”



But it turns out Mitchell will be on “Lost” again.

“They called and something had kind of shifted for them and they asked if I would come back,” she said. Mitchell readily agreed. Although she knows how and why Juliet, who was last seen detonating a bomb, will return, she can’t divulge details.

During her time on “Lost,” Mitchell learned to trust the producers. When she first heard that Juliet would be romantically linked to Sawyer (Josh Holloway) last season, she balked.

“We thought it was so dumb,” she said. “But what really happened and what was surprising to me is that Josh and I started bringing out different sides of each other, and we started to feel really safe together. He’s massively in love with his wife and I’m in love with my husband, so we know what love is. It made the playing of it really safe, and all of a sudden, there we were and we just caught each other. I miss the two characters together and I never thought I would say that. So I was happily wrong about that.”

Source: Boston Herald