LOST ILLUSIONS

IT WAS A GRIPPING, GROUNDBREAKING LOST DEVOLVED INTO SUCH SMASH, BUT LOST DEVOLVED INTO SUCH A TOXIC PRODUCTION THAT EVEN CO-SHOWRUNNER DAMON LINDELOF NOW SAYS OF HIS LEADERSHIP: "I FAILED." IN A POWERFUL EXCERPT FROM HER NEW BOOK, MAUREEN RYAN OPENS THE HATCH

- MAUREEN RYAN

“I got chills.” 

A woman I’ll call Theresa was telling me about the early days of the Lost writers room, before the ABC drama premiered in September 2004. She knew in her bones it was special, long before huge ratings confirmed it. The story of plane crash survivors on a surreal tropical island— including Jack, a doctor transporting his late father’s body home, and Locke, a flinty survivalist in a wheelchair—was going to be, she was sure, deeper and wilder and more entertaining than the audience could possibly imagine.

“Someone would say, ‘Well, what if Locke walks?’ ” Theresa remembered. “ ‘What if the coffin is empty?’ As all that was going down, literally you got chills. We started doing the wave in the room, like, holy shit! I’d never seen anything like it in my career—that miraculous creative energy. The writers in that room were great.”

“It was heaven,” said a Lost veteran I’ll call Gretchen, describing an atmosphere in which ideas could come from anyone, regardless of rank.

When it came to the highlights of that gig—the big swings, the fusing of sci-fi mythology, adventure, and rich character building—the only thing Theresa could compare it to was seeing the original Dreamgirls on Broadway. When Jennifer Holliday gave her all to “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going,” “people were floating in their chairs,” Theresa said. “When something hits a certain frequency and you know it’s magic—that’s what was going on in that room.”