Lost has cemented its place on the list of all-time great TV shows, but for Evangeline Lilly, not all of the memories from her time on the series are good ones.
Fresh off her starring turn in Ant-Man and the Wasp, the newly-minted Marvel hero sat down for a recent episode of The Lost Boys podcast, where she got very candid about making the mysterious ABC drama -- including several traumatic on-set moments that led to her putting her foot down when it came to filming nude scenes.
“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," Lilly recalled. "And I was mortified and I was trembling and when it finished, I was crying my eyes out and I had to go on do a very formidable, very strong scene thereafter.”
“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," she added. "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.”
The actress also recalled going toe-to-toe with writers and producers over her character, Kate's, motivations and actions, particularly, the "obnoxious" storyline that revolved around her love triangle with Jack (Matthew Fox) and Sawyer (Josh Holloway).
“At the beginning, she was kinda cool, and then as the show went on, she became more and more predictable and obnoxious," Lilly mused. "I felt like my character went from being anonymous—really having her own story and her own journey and her own agendas—to chasing to men around the island and that irritated the shit out of me. And I did throw scripts across rooms when I’d read them because I would get very frustrated by the diminishing amount of autonomy she had and the diminishing amount of her own story there was to play.”
Ultimately, the actress said, her dreams for the character were bigger than what she got to play out on screen. “I wanted her to be better, because she was an icon for strength and autonomy for women, and I thought we could have done better than that.”
“The great thing about that is that she was flawed, and that’s so important," she added. "If you don’t have flaws in the women on screen, then what you’re telling the world is that women have perfect if they’re going to be lovable. And if you have flawed women on screen who are also icons of femininity, who are also beloved, then it gives us all permission to be flawed.”
See more from Lilly, including how her Wasp character may team up with Brie Larson's Captain Marvel in the upcoming final Avengers movie, in the video below!
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