Elizabeth Mitchell on Lost's Final Season

Lost and Found: Q&A with Elizabeth Mitchell

By Joan Wagner
Oprah.com | October 30, 2009

Just when she thought Lost producers were done with her, they reeled Elizabeth Mitchell back in! With her character Juliet apparently back from the dead (or at least living on in flashbacks), Mitchell says she's been traveling between Hawaii and the set of her new sci-fi series V. Mitchell shares what she can about Lost's final season, why she's surprised Juliet survived so long and why Juliet might not be the one for Sawyer.

Joan Wagner: Anything you can share about how Juliet Burke will play into the final season of Lost?

Elizabeth Mitchell: I wish I could! There's a complete blackout. They've asked us to say absolutely nothing. I can say what I always say is that one thing will happen and it will look like this, but it'll probably be something else. ... It's good, I can say that.

Normally, they were really happy for us to tease and everything, but this year they're not even going to do any promos. I think they just really want to keep it really secret, and I think that's probably the right way to play it.

It's not as fun as you might think to know and then not be able to say. You want people watch, but at the same time you're like, "Well..." And they will rewrite things if they think something's going to leak, so it's almost best not to say anything.

JW: Were you surprised when you found out Juliet would meet her supposed death with the bomb?

EM: I didn't learn until just a little bit before then that I wasn't coming back at the time. Then I had booked V. Then, they called to say could I please come back? So all of it was so crazy. The emotions were running high. We were all lovin' on each other and sorry to say goodbye because it had been three years. I thought it was a bit dramatic, but I think it played nicely. I was happy with it.

JW: In the season finale, your character was the only one who didn't receive a visit from Jacob in your flashback. Any theories?

EM: I really don't know except that it seemed to be that those are people who are on some kind of a list, who are in line for something. That's my personal theory. But I have no idea what their idea is behind the whole thing.

After Jacob got killed, I was like: "Okay, did they just kill God? Or did they just kill the devil?" It's one of those things where you can't wrap your mind around it. To me, it can go in any number of different directions, so I'm just excited to see what direction they go down.

JW: Over the years, there's been a lot of unexplained phenomena on Lost: time travel, the smoke monster...is there any one thing you'd really like to see explained?

EM: I would love to know how it can rest on time. That would be really cool. And I do kind of want to know who Jacob is.

And yeah, I would like to know what the smoke monster is because I could never tell if it was bad or good. It seemed to punish people who were bad—but it didn't get Juliet, so I'm kind of surprised at that. Honestly, I really thought she was going to be gone at the end of Season 3 by the smoke monster for sure. I really did because I was like, "Oh, it took her picture, so that's done." So I'm really surprised that's not how she died.

JW: If you could choose, would Juliet end up with Jack or Sawyer?

EM: I don't know! I'm so happy she had the time that she had with Sawyer because I always thought of Juliet as kind of a POW. That was my take on her. When she was with Sawyer, you got to see that she was actually making peace with some of the more disreputable parts of her past with Ben and kind of coming back into that girl that we first met. And I say girl because that's kind of how I thought of her then. She's definitely a woman now, but she was so kind of naïve.

So I really enjoyed her with Sawyer. But I like Sawyer and Kate. I'm very torn. I kind of wouldn't mind if we all just kind of traded every couple of years. And then [Juliet] can be with her sister and Julian and it all works out really well. So I really can't say one way or another. I really feel that time for Juliet, just in watching of it, with Sawyer, was probably one of the best things that happened in her life.

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Printed from Oprah.com on Saturday, May 26, 2012