Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, showrunners for the hit TV series Lost, are surprised and shocked by the allegations of racism and toxicity revealed in the new book, Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood.
In an excerpt posted to Vanity Fair, the book by Maureen Ryan has Lindelof admitting that he “failed” to provide “safety and comfort” to the writers’ room. Writers and actors told Ryan how the show had numerous moments of racism and discrimination. Actor Harold Perrineau, for instance, said how he felt white co-stars got bigger storylines than actors of color. He said, according to Variety, “It became pretty clear that I was the Black guy. Daniel [Dae Kim] was the Asian guy. And then you had Jack and Kate and Sawyer.” Perrineau also said that he told a producer his concerns about storylines and racial preference in other instances, such as in photo shoots. According to him, the producer said “this is just how audiences follow stories,” adding that the white characters were “relatable.”
Perrineau also said that he spoke up about how his character Michael never expressed concern about his missing child except for one time in the script. Perrineau said, “I can’t be another person who doesn’t care about missing Black boys, even in the context of fiction, right? This is just furthering the narrative that nobody cares about Black boys, even Black fathers.” After speaking up, Perrineau said Cuse announced Perrineau’s character wouldn’t return. Perrineau said that Cuse told him, “‘Well, you know, you said to us, if we don’t have anything good for you, you want to go.’”
“I was just asking for equal depth,” Perrineau continued.
The writers room was rife with discriminatory behavior, behavior the book alleges the Lost showrunners fostered. Black and brown characters were treated as afterthoughts in the writers room, and according to writer Monica Owusu-Breen and other writers, the only Asian-American staff writer was continuously called “Korean” instead of their real name. A writer who was adopting an Asian child was also allegedly told by another writer that “no grandparent wants a slanty-eyed grandchild.”
Lindelof allegedly told writers about Perrineau’s firing by saying the actor “called me racist, so I fired his ass.” Owusu-Breen said that everyone in the room laughed at Lindelof’s remarks.
“There was so much shit, and so much racist shit, and then laughter. It was ugly,” she said. “I was like, ‘I don’t know if they’re perceiving this as a joke or if they mean it.’ But it wasn’t funny. Saying that was horrible.”
Owusu-Breen further described the energy of the writers room as “hazing.”
“It was very much middle school and relentlessly cruel. And I’ve never heard that much racist commentary in one room in my career.”
She also described how she would “go home and cry for an hour” before being with her children “because you have to excise all the stress you’ve been holding in” and described how Cuse evoked disturbing lynching imagery when asking her what he wanted from her when writing the episode about Mr. Eko’s (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) death.
“Calrton said something to the effect of, ‘I want to hang him from the highest tree. God, if we could only cut his dick off and shove it down his throat,’” she said. “At which point I said, ‘You may want to temper the lynching imagery, lest you offend.’ And I was very clearly angry.”
Writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach also said he quit after the second season because of the work environment, which he described as a “predatory ecosystem with its own carnivorous megafauna” and writer/producer Melinda Hsu Taylor said, “Damon once said, ‘I don’t trust any writer who isn’t miserable, because that tells me you don’t care.” She added that she started leaving eyeliner in her desk drawer so she wouldn’t have to go to the bathroom to redraw her eyeliner.
Lindelof spoke in two separate interviews for the book, acknowledging his “fundamental inexperience as a manager and a boss.” He added that instead of seeing his role “as someone who was supposed to model a climate of creative danger and risk-taking but provide safety and comfort in the creative process” he failed to do so.
“[Hollywood tokenism is] what I saw in the business around me. And so I was like, okay, as long as there are one or two [writers] who don’t look and think exactly like me, then, then I’m okay. I came to learn that was even worse,” he continued. “For those specific individuals, forget about the ethics or the morality involved around that decision, but just talking about the human effect of being th eonly woman or the only person of color and how you are treated and othered–I was a part of that, a thousand percent.”
He said that while he didn’t remember his comments around Perrineau’s firing, he said that it hurt him to know he might have been part of Perrineau’s poor experience on the show.
“What can I say? Other than it breaks my heart that that was Harold’s experience,” he said. “And I’ll just cede that the events that you’re describing happened 17 years ago, and I don’t know why anybody would make that up about me.”
Lindelof also added that there was “a disproportionate amount of focus on Jack and Kate and Locke and Sawyer–the white characters. Harold was completely and totally right to point that out.It’s one of the things that I’ve had deep and profound regrets about in the two decades since. I do feel that Harold was legitimately and professionally conveying conerns about hischaracter and how significant it was that Michael and Walt–with the exception of Rose–were really the only Black characters on the show.”
Lindelof did admit that he was “shocked and appalled and surprised” by what the writers said about their experiences, and that he couldn’t imagine Cuse saying what he was accused of having said.
“I’m telling you, I swear, I have no recollection of those specific things,” he said. “And that’s not me saying that they didn’t happen. I’m just saying that it’s literally baffling my brain–that they did happen and that I bore witness to them or that I said them. To think that they came out of my mouth or the mouths of people that I still consider friends is just not computing.”
Cuse’s statement regarding allegations of his racism included his “regret” at causing pain.
“I deeply regret that anyone at Lost would have to hear them,” he said. “They are highly insensitive, inappropriate and offensive. It breaks my heart to hear it. It’s deeply upsetting to know that there were people who had such bad experiences. I did not know people were feeling that way. No one ever complained to me, nor am I aware that anybody complained to ABC Studios. I wish I had known. I would have done what I could to make changes.”
It would seem that Lindelof may have changed over the years since Lost, since he was the series creator of Watchmen, hailed by critics and viewers as one of the most gripping series about Black history, including the 1921 Tulsa Massacre, reparations, and a dissection of what Blackness means in America through the character of Dr. Manhattan (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II).
