Evangeline Lilly has most recently been seen on the big screen in Ant-Man and the Wasp, but the actress made her name years before that on the set of ABC's Lost, where she played Kate Austen. Although she was one of the most visible women on TV during the time of the show's original run, she has now revealed on The Lost Boys podcast that her time on set was not all fun and games. In fact, sometimes she had problems with Kate as a character. Per the actress...
I always felt she was obnoxious. Not at the beginning--at the beginning she was kind of cool cool. Then, as the show went on, I felt like she became more and more predictable and obnoxious. Because I felt that my character went from being autonomous - really having her own story and her own journey and her own agendas - to chasing two men around the island. And that irritated the shit out of me. And I did throw scripts across rooms when I would read them because I did get very frustrated about the diminishing amount of autonomy she had.
Lilly went on to talk about the role of Kate in the podcast, noting she felt that the character had fewer and fewer big storylines as the show moved forward, although she was quick to react and say she "was not opposed" to romance. All in all, she seems to have some frustrations with the way her ABC character came together between 2004 and 2010. She also says she isn't arguing with the fact her character became one of the biggest female characters on television at the time, but she still says she feels like her character could have been better, citing an example of the time she was captured after chasing after Jack and used as a bargaining tool in a plot that really "irritated the shit" out of her.
Elsewhere in the podcast, Evangeline Lilly revealed there were nudity-based scenes during the making of Lost that left her feeling vulnerable and uncomfortable. According to the actress,
In Season 3, I'd had a bad experience on set with being basically cornered into doing a scene partially naked, and I felt had no choice in the matter. And I was mortified and I was trembling, and when it finished, I was crying my eyes out and had to go on do a very formidable, very strong scene immediately thereafter. And so, in Season 4, another scene came up where Kate was undressing, and I fought very hard to have that scene be under my control, and I failed to control it again. And so, I then said, 'That's it. No more. You can write whatever you want, I won't do it. I will never take my clothes off on this show again.' And I didn't.
On the one hand, any nudity that appears on network TV is tame compared to the stuff that shows up on say HBO or Showtime; however, it was the experience on set that seems to have upset Lilly. Still, for the most part, Evangeline Lilly had positive things to say about her Lost experience and how it helped her to be a professional actress, also noting 'this crazy business has been good to me" after revealing about the ABC series and even saying that she liked that Kate had flaws. In addition, Lilly said:
I would say being in Lost was my destiny because it certainly wasn't my agenda. I was one of those very rare, rare actresses who wasn't trying to be an actress when I got that job. And the only reason why I took the job at the time was because I had enormous faith and I really believed that everything in my life continued to push and prod and point me toward this thing... It felt like destiny.
Evangeline Lilly's Marvel character, Hope Van Dyne, wears business attire and even a super suit in the movies, and Lilly says one thing she really likes about the role is that she is fully clothed the whole time. So, it looks like after Lost, Lilly was able to take on roles that more suited her personality and what she felt she was willing and able to bring to roles. You'll---hopefully!---next be able to catch Evangeline Lilly in the still-untitled Avengers 4.
