A UNION OF LOST SOLES

An interview with Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet Burke), featuring in issue #22 of Lost Magazine.

Lost Magazine: When we talked at the open of the season, during the shooting of Because You Left you mentioned that you were playing Juliet like she’s just trying to stay calm despite all the insanity: it wasn’t long before the insanity got amped up…

Yes! It wasn’t so much calm, as I felt so much that she is simply over it all. But then everything goes wrong! Everything she tries to do fails. She just fights and fights and fights and she has all these machinations. She literally fears for her life and everyone else’s lives. Everyone is freaking out and any horrible thing that is going on in her head – if she lets out even a little bit – it’s over for her.

Everyone is also so riled up that she’s keeping everyone in line as much as she possibly can. It’s not going to be done by violence, and it’s not going to be done by screaming. She’s just taking stock and trying to regroup. Plus, for the first episode, she was drunk [laughs]!  

There’s nothing more sobering than what they were facing – so sadly her buzz didn’t get to linger long, did it?

I wish it had! She knows she can’t do anything right now. It’s an impossible situation and yet, I would still love to see her just fall down and laugh her butt off at it all!

Surprise, surprise the writers started sowing the seeds of a Sawyer and Juliet connection on the beach. Then later we really see it when James confides in her about seeing Kate. Is that when you maybe started to see that a relationship between the two of you might work?

You know what’s really funny? They’re just depending on each other because that’s all they have to depend on. But when you watch it on camera there is a definite connection there. It’s actually really funny to me that that’s what it is. Obviously, Sawyer and Juliet have a connection. I didn’t know they did, but they really do! 

Was it still hard for you to try and play that since it never felt natural in your head for these two characters to gravitate towards one another?

I never really felt one way or the other about it because it felt awfully sudden to me. But in the watching of Sawyer and Juliet, there is this idea that it’s not the joy that we share that brings us together, but it’s our shared pain. It’s actually the connection that we as humans have to one another and what can bond us closer than anything else is that understood pain.  

I believe that’s what these two people have. He lost Kate and lost his friends. She lost Jack and Sun. She lost a lot. She betrayed everyone she’s with and lost the chance at being with her sister. They are both broken-hearted people and it’s fascinating that they could’ve turned to almost anyone... but they turned to one another. I like that.

What were your thoughts when you first found out that the island group was going to be stranded in 1974?

I hadn’t read it because I had been home for a week in Washington [laughs]! What happened was that I got a call from wardrobe saying, “Okay, you’ve got to get in here immediately. You’re doing a lot in the next episode.” I was like, “Okay… alright. How bad can it be? I’ve got some of Juliet’s clothes.” They said, “Do you have Juliet’s clothes from the 1970s?” I said, “Nope!” [One of the producer’s] called to give me a heads-up on shooting and I asked if Juliet was finally going to get to take a shower. She said yes, but that I was going to get really greasy again and I was like, “What?!”

Read the full interview in issue #22 of Lost Magazine – on sale now.

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