Titus Welliver Looks Back on "Lost"

[JamesG]

"Deadwood" scribe Elizabeth Sarnoff eventually began writing for J.J. Abrams’ ABC mystery drama, and she phoned Titus Welliver with an enticing — if vague — offer.

“She said, ‘So I’ve got this really interesting character for you. I can’t tell you anything about it,'” Welliver says, laughing.




He signed on in good faith and soon found himself shooting his first scene “on the beach with Mark Pellegrino. It was very abstract and kind of obtuse to me, because I hadn’t watched the third and fourth season.”

Still, he waved off producers’ attempts to explain his character’s backstory, feeling the knowledge unnecessary to his performance. But then…




The big reveal came — that Welliver’s Man in Black was the island’s smoke monster — he was as shocked as everyone else. During rehearsal, after the Man in Black admitted he was the ominous entity, “Nestor Carbonell’s looking at me, and he goes, ‘Holy s—t.” And I go, ‘What?’ And he says, ‘Do you realize the weight of what you just said?… In the Lost world, that’s the equivalent of saying, ‘Luke, I am your father.'”

Welliver laughs. “He said, ‘Titus, you’re the f—king smoke monster,’… and I went, ‘Oh, that is really f—king cool.'”

http://tvline.com/gallery/titus-well...rk-pellegrino/