From the moment he first arrived on screen claiming to be an innocent balloonist marooned on the island, Benjamin Linus has been an unstoppable force on Lost. While normally depicted as a cold and calculating villain, it now seems that Linus is the only character who can bring the Oceanic Six back to the island, saving humanity in the process.

Playing this complex and captivating character is Michael Emerson, a stage actor who made a name for himself on television by playing serial killer William Hinks on The Practice. We recently caught up with Emerson to talk about the complexities of Lost, the lighter side of Benjamin Linus and having microwavable food thrown at your head.

How did you get into acting and when did you decide it’s what you wanted to do for a living?

I got interested in it when I was a kid. The earliest memory I have of an urge to be on stage was I saw a kid that went to my church doing the school play at the high school and I just thought he was so great and so charismatic. I thought, “If I could ever be half that cool, I would want to do that.” So I studied it as an undergraduate in college and then I lost track of it for a long time. I fell into another line of work – I became a magazine illustrator and I did that all through my 20s. I didn’t become an actor again until my middle-30s. So I’ve come back to it late and I guess I’m still trying to make up for lost time.

Was acting something that you just couldn’t let go? What made you decide to go back to it?

I knew that my life would be in the arts and I had skills and sensibilities that lent themselves to the theatre or the graphic arts or what have you. But the longer I pursued the graphic arts, I realized that I was happy to be pursuing a creative field, but I wasn’t enjoying the process of it very much – the lonely hours hunched over a drawing table, the solitary nature of it. So I was glad when I got back to the theatre and I realized that the same set of tools could be brought to bear but in a somewhat more celebratory and social work setting. I felt that I then found the best of both worlds. So the theatre seems to work fine for me.

One of your first big television roles was playing serial killer William Hinks in The Practice, which earned you an Emmy. What was it like playing that role and how much of an impact do you think that character had on your acting career, including Damon Lindelof and Carlton’s Cuse’s decision to cast you as Benjamin Linus on Lost?

It was the first character of that sort I had ever played, whether it was on stage or in front of the camera. As you can see, it has colored all of the work I’ve done subsequently on TV for sure and possibly in the cinema as well. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. It was a departure for me. I had always played mostly comical characters previous to that, but now that sort of positioned me into the “damaged and dangerous” kind of category, which is fine with me.

They continue to give me interesting characters and certainly Ben is a great and complicated and mysterious and wonderful undertaking. But it’s a type of playing that I wouldn’t have predicted would be my meat and potatoes and I wonder if there will be more of it in my life or if I’ll find a way into some other sort of type of character.

Lindelof said in interviews when Sayid captured Ben and first introduced the audience to your character, the plan was always to have Ben eventually revealed to be the leader of The Others, but the writers had a “trap door” in place to have Ben end up as just another Other in case the actor who played him wasn’t working out. When you were originally cast for that three-episode arc, did you know that was the case?

No, but that was my sort of intuition. Look, when you take a guest spot on TV, every actor sort of has that tiny kernel of hope at the back of his mind that you’re going to play this character so well that they’re going to figure out a way to keep you and that happened for me on Lost. And then, in hindsight, you say, “What was the dynamic of that exactly?” And I think it is just as you described – a sort of an onscreen screen test. They had written this character. They thought they liked it, they thought they would do things with it, but they were going to wait and see how it played out. Luckily it played out well with me with my portrayal, so they kept me in it and they ran with it. It was a kind of an audition that I passed and I’m glad to have passed it.

At what point did you start to get the sense that Benjamin Linus was going to be a big deal on the show?

In the early going, I don’t know, in the third or fourth episode that I was in when Sayid was still pressuring me to reveal my secrets or who I represented or who I was working for, it came to me one day, “Wouldn’t it be a neat twist if instead of being some henchman that I was actually the guy in charge?” And I actually mentioned it to a director on whatever episode it was and he said, “I can’t really discuss that with you.”

And then I thought, “Well, if I’m not on to something that’s true, I’m on to something that should be true or would be cool if it was true.” It turned out it was true.

So did you decide to play the character like that at that point?

I always played the character sort of the same, which was give up as little as possible, play it as earnest and let the business of who he was or what he was up to be a contract between the writers and the viewers.

Lindelof said that what sealed the deal for him and Carlton Cuse was the way you delivered the line “You guys got any milk?” during the chilling breakfast scene with Locke and Jack.

(Laughs.)

It’s the first time we see how cold and calculating the character can really be and your delivery of that line is perfect. Ben has had many more bone-chilling lines since then and you have a tendency to deliver his more disturbing lines perfectly calm, which makes him creepier than if you were adding inflection to his voice.

Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?

How did you come up with that? How did you decide to deliver his lines without any emotion?

I learned it on stage, where I learned everything that I do as an actor. I have played some villains, Shakespearean villains like Iago, and I learned that something that scares an audience is when the subtext of a line reading does not match what the line says. In other words, if someone is inappropriately cool in a hot situation, it unnerves the audience. They’re suspicious. To say the right words, but in the wrong tone is a good tool. It sends a signal. It suggests to us that this person doesn’t think like I do. Either this person is warped or crazy or this person is up to something.

With Ben, you certainly get the impression that there is a lot going on below the surface and that he’s constantly up to something.

And I think that’s an important effect to achieve in our work, at least with a character like Ben. One of the things the audience longs for is a sense of a character’s inner-life. And if you play a character that gives up little, then you want to suggest or promise that it’s not because there’s nothing to give up. It’s because they choose to keep it to themselves. It’s much more interesting.

When Ben was first introduced, it seemed quite clear that he was a villain on the show, but as the story has unfolded, we’ve become more sympathetic to him. The scene last year when Keamy killed Ben’s daughter in cold blood right in front of his eyes was truly heartbreaking and it showed just how vulnerable and human Ben actually is. Do you think of Ben as a villain? Do you think that as he says he is, he’s actually one of the good guys? How do you see the character?

I probably view him a little more sympathetically then most of the people who watch the show, but partly that’s craft and partly it’s that I really think he’s a more ambiguous creature than some people do. I think it’s entirely possible that he ends up being one of the heroes of the show because we don’t know what the stakes are for him. We don’t know who he’s fighting and for what. Maybe if we knew, we would admire his steadiness and his relentlessness.

And he definitely thinks that he’s right.

That’s certainly true. That’s safe to say. Ben believes pretty much everything he says and he’s not much of a liar really. He’s a manipulator, but he doesn’t tell that many lies. And he really hasn’t hurt that many people, in the present day at least.

We saw his honesty again in last week’s episode when Jack attempted to defend him and Ben admitted that he hired the lawyer who was attempting to prove that Kate isn’t Aaron’s mother.

Ben is nothing if not practical. He’d already gotten what he needed from that play, so why hide it? It’s a new deal now, they’re on the docks. So we need to talk frankly and they need to know the score. Or at least the part of the score that Ben is willing to reveal.

But this business of Ben becoming more complicated and less patently villain, that’s part of the whole mechanics of the show in general. The show started out to seem like a very simple story and as it’s gone it’s grown in complexity and ambiguity, as have most of the characters. All of those stereotypes seem to be in Lost to be broken down and reconfigured and recontextualized. And they’re great at that.

Your character has had some truly memorable interactions, particularly Locke, Jack and Charles Widmore. Do you have a favorite actor to work with on the set? Is there a particular character that if you see Ben has a scene with him you really look forward to it?

When I see that Terry [O'Quinn] and I are on the call sheet together, I know that it’s going to be a good day’s work. It’s going to be well played and it’s also going to be a fast and easy and lighthearted day because I think the Ben and John Locke scenes are brilliantly written and their dialogue or their dance is near the heart of the story of Lost. And we just work so well together. We’re of similar ages and similar craft and similar attitude about our work, so they are effortless days, they are carefree and the product always seems to turn out great.

Ben is definitely in Locke’s head, which is always great too.

Yeah. Well each of them is the nut the other cannot break somehow. They’re like irritants to each other and yet brothers in some strange way.

Earlier this season, you got a Hot Pocket thrown at your head when you spooked Hurley. How tough was it to keep a straight face during that scene?

Well, we did a lot of takes of it as you can imagine trying to get the Hot Pocket right. Some of them were too dry, some of them had way too much pizza sauce in them and they blew up like all over the place, so that was hilarious. Then it takes 10 minutes to get your straight face back on. But yeah, it was an interesting evening’s work. And, of course, they cut my deadpan response, which was: “Now that’s just a waste of a Hot Pocket.” (Laughs.) Which I thought was a classic downbeat Ben dry read, but they cut it.

They give Ben a lot more funny lines then the audience ever sees because that’s the first thing they’ll cut of Ben is when he’s being funny.

That’s too bad because he actually is a very funny character.

He’s very witty, I think. (Laughs.)

There are countless websites devoted to analyzing Lost and coming up with theories about the show. As an actor on the show, do you try to figure out what it all means or do you just focus on the script in front of you and focus on that day’s work?

We do both but like the viewers we’re sort of watchers of the show too. And as readers of the scripts, we’re continually trying to figure out what’s going on, where it’s headed or “Does this mean what I think it means?” We have those discussions on the set. Some people are more interested in that than others. I mean, Jorge [Garcia] is always a good one to talk about “All right man, where’s this thing going and what do you think?” because he keeps track of all of the most bizarre theories about the show and he’s also a sharp reader of the script. He can sort of read the mind of the writers a little bit, so sometimes he has a great idea of where a thing is leading.

Which is interesting too since the writers have said that his character a lot of times stands in for the audience – that he is used to represent what the audience is thinking.

He is. He is us if we were in that situation. Bewildered, bemused, out of place, ill-equipped, all of that. He’s an earthling amongst aliens.

Your wife is a huge fan of the show and she even played your mother in a flashback episode. Does she try to get inside information from you about the show?

No, she tries to get me to shut up. She’s a purist, you know? She doesn’t want to know anything before she witnesses it in the official and legal telecast. So I have to kind of be quiet. I’ll come home and say, “You’re never going to believe what I did today.”

And she’ll say, “Shut up! Shut up!”

Obviously, you don’t know what the writers have in store for your character or the show next season, but how would you like to see Lost end and how would you like to see things end for Ben?

I don’t know that Ben will end up being any different when this is all said and done than he has been right along. It may be that Ben is unchanged. We may just, because of circumstances that the writers create, we may just come to see him differently. The change may be in the viewer, not in the character.

The end of the whole story, the final conclusion – I hope it’s sort of contextual. I have a feeling that it’s going to be a thing that was in plain sight all along. I hope that it’s a thing where we go, “Oh my god, I should have known. It was there all the time. How did I not get that?” I hope that’s the note that we feel at the end of it all.

If anyone could pull that off, it would be the writers of Lost.

It’s going to be something where there’s one more dimension to the events we’ve witnessed than we thought or than we dreamed. Something that repositions everything. And I think these are the guys for the job. They’re deeply experienced and deeply read in science fiction and fantasy and horror and comic books. They are structurally brilliant. So if you can depend on anyone for an ending that means something, I think it will be these guys.

Interviewed by Joel Murphy. Lost airs Wednesday nights on ABC, but you probably already knew that.

You can listen to audio highlights of our interview with Michael Emerson by clicking on the play button below or by subscribing to our Hobo Radio podcast:

One on One with Michael Emerson [ 17:32 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Joel Murphy

While many licensed toys on the market are complete and utter crap, Spawn creator Todd McFarlane has made a name for himself by sculpting photo-realistic toys that look more like mini-statues than action figures.

To date, McFarlane has done two different waves of Lost action figures, one in 2006 and one in 2007. The sets include some very cool collectables, including a Hatch box set depicting the memorable Hatch scene with Jack, Kate, Hurley and Locke from the season one finale and a Jin figure from season two depicting the scene where he ran towards Sawyer and Michael on the beach with his hands tied behind his back (the figure even has a voice chip inside it that shouts “Others! Others!” – or as Jin pronounces it “Udders! Udders!” – over and over again).

While the Lost figures that have been made to date have been pretty awesome, unfortunately they didn’t make enough of a profit to justify continuing the line. However, I think if McFarlane and company take my advice, they’ll be selling these toys like hot cakes (assuming that people still have money to buy hot cakes in this terrible economy). So while I go wait patiently by the phone for a call from the ABC marketing department, please enjoy this list of Lost collectables I’d like to see …

Taller Ghost Walt (Season Four) – Walt and Michael were two of the central characters in season one of Lost. Unfortunately, since the first four seasons of the show take place over a matter of months (and since the producers failed to cast Gary Coleman as Walt), the writers were forced to limit the amount of screen time given to Walt after season one to hide the fact that Malcolm David Kelly was going through puberty. Their solution was to have a “Taller Ghost Walt” appear first to Shannon in season two, then later to Locke in season four. So, since we all know how tough the life of a child actor can be and since Walt’s presence is missed on the show, I think that McFarlane should immortalize Malcolm David Kelly’s awkward teen years forever in an action figure.

Kate with a gun to her head (Seasons One through Five) – While Kate managed to evade the police for years before arriving on the island, somehow she lost all of her street smarts when she crash landed in the jungle (luckily, she managed to keep her magical tracking powers). Since every other episode seems to involve Kate wandering off into the jungle by herself only to be kidnapped at gunpoint, we might as well have an action figure commemorating the event. Besides, the Oceanic Six seem destined to head back to the island, so it’s only a matter of time before Kate is being held hostage once again.

Shirtless Sawyer (Season Five) – Since the writers of Lost were clearly trying to appease their female fans by having Sawyer go shirtless for the majority of this season’s premiere, why not give them their own mini-Sawyer to take home with them. (Bonus points if he comes with a pair of those ridiculous reading glasses Jack made for him, so that he can appear rugged, but intellectual.)

Nosebleed Charlotte (Season Five) – This season, it seems that all Charlotte is bringing to the table is collapsing and spurting blood out of her nose, so why not play to her strengths?

New York socialite Tom (Season Four) – I was very sad to see the loveable Tom murdered by Sawyer in the season three finale. So it was a pleasant surprise seeing Tom resurface during Michael’s flashback episode in New York. The brief glimpse of Tom (and his “special friend”) living it up in a swank New York hotel room was a wonderful moment in the show and I can’t help but think of all of the fun misadventures you could have with a New York socialite Tom action figure. (Bonus points if McFarlane can find a way to make Tom’s clothes removable so that you can also recreate M.C. Gainey’s infamous naked guy scene in Sideways.)

Shih Tzu t-shirt Hurley (Season Five) – McFarlane did make a Hurley toy, but it was a season one figure that features Hurley holding the flag from the golf course he made on the island. Hurley has given us so many glorious moments on the show, so he deserves a better figure. Why not memorialize Hurley and Sayid’s wacky buddy comedy storyline that involved killing a guy with a dishwasher, lugging around an unconscious Sayid a la Weekend at Bernie’s and buying a ridiculous yellow Shi Tzu t-shirt from a rest stop?

Nikki and Paulo’s buried alive play set (Season Three) – Nikki and Paulo don’t deserve their own toys, but the writers of the show deserve to have their two greatest failures memorialized so that they never make a mistake that bad again. Also, it would be fun to bury these two awful characters over and over again.

Hospital gown Locke with removable kidney (Season One) – It’s not hard to see all of the emotional baggage Locke has been lugging around since his biological father resurfaced in his life in order to procure one of Locke’s kidneys. Perhaps if McFarlane could create a hospital gown John Locke, we could replay the fateful scene and this time give Locke the tender father-son moment he’s been longing for (and perhaps save him from getting thrown out of a hotel window and breaking his back).

Ageless Richard Alpert (Since the dawn of time apparently) – As Juliet explained to Locke in this season’s “Jughead” episode, Richard Alpert has always been on the island and is quite old, yet he never seems to age. Just think of how versatile a Richard Alpert action figure could be – you can have Richard interact with young Ben or the time-traveling Oceanic bunch or you could even go back to the beginning of time and have Richard square off with dinosaurs on the island, a la Jurassic Park. Or, if that got boring, you could use the figure to play out your favorite scenes from The Dark Knight or Suddenly Susan. The possibilities are endless.

Juliet with a low-cut shirt (Season Five) – You’re welcome Chris Kirkman.

Mr. Eko and the Smoke Monster (Season Three) – Todd McFarlane already created an Eko action figure and to be perfectly honest it is probably the best Lost figure he has created to date. So why give Eko another toy? Because this time I want him to escape that damn smoke monster so that he doesn’t suffer the lamest and most ridiculous looking death the show has given us to date.

Jacob (Season Four) – Not that I think a Jacob figure would be particularly fun to play with; I just want this toy so that I can finally find out what he looks like.

Ghostbuster Miles (Season Four) – Mattel has already announced plans for a classic Ghostbusters toy line, so why not throw Miles into the mix and officially give him the job that he was clearly born to do? He’s bound to make a better Ghostbuster than Rick Moranis.

Porn ‘stache Matt Parkman (Season Four) – Before he was stealing Daphne’s (and Mohinder’s) heart on Heroes, Greg Grunberg had a brief cameo playing the pilot of Oceanic Flight 815 in the beginning of the show. Last season, when Frank Lapidus watched the newscast featuring footage of the faux Oceanic 815 wreckage that was recovered underwater, the news program ran a file photo of Grunberg sporting an awesome porn ‘stache. So while Grunberg’s days as a pilot may have come to a tragic end, with this toy he could still give mustache rides to Heaven.

Pill-popping, Ron Burgundy beard Jack (Seasons Three, Four and Five) – Jack may be a polarizing figure for many Lost fans, but even all of the Jack haters out there have to admit that its fun watching him stumble around while sporting that ridiculous facial hair. Besides, they need to make the figure so that I can walk him around the streets of San Diego saying things like, “Milk was a bad choice.”

Joel Murphy is the creator of HoboTrashcan, which is probably why he has his own column. He loves pugs, hates Jimmy Fallon and has an irrational fear of robots. You can contact him at murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com.

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