Island life

MICHAEL is back, but what has he been up to all this time?


"I wish I could tell you," actor Harold Perrineau says.

The question has nagged viewers of the show Lost, which follows the lives of passengers stranded on a mysterious island after their plane crashes. The tormented single father played by Perrineau sailed away with his son at the end of the second season and did not return at any point during the third.

Although he is listed as a cast member in the present fourth season, Perrineau did not appear until four episodes ago, when Michael was introduced as a deck-swabbing crewman named Kevin Johnson on a strange freighter that has been drifting off the coast and apparently giving those aboard a deadly case of cabin fever.

The subsequent episode revealed what happened after Perrineau's character shockingly gunned down fellow passengers Ana-Lucia and Libby in order to release seemingly evil Ben and retrieve his son Walt from captivity.

"I hope people see Michael's return and think, 'oh, this is gonna be good'," Perrineau says over lunch. "I hope they think this ride is good. We busted our butts doing (the Michael-centric episode). It felt like we were making a movie because there's so much stuff that happens."

Getting the rest of the Michael-related Lost questions out of the way: will his son also return to the show? And was he the man in the coffin during that jaw-dropping flashfoward at the end of season three? According to Perrineau, the answers are maybe and he has no idea.

"Oh, I thought for sure it was Michael in the coffin," he says. "But I still don't know."

Perrineau says the show's writers have kept him just as clueless as the audience. He has not read any scripts for the six episodes that were planned after the writers' strike in the US. However, that does not mean viewers should expect to see less of Michael after his return. Perrineau is scheduled to report to the set in Hawaii after this interview.

"I know I'll be there until the end of the season," he says. "I have no idea if it goes beyond that or not."

The 44-year-old actor from New York tenses up when he talks about the third season. Perrineau is the only one of the 14 original Lost cast members who did not appear in a third-season flashback, mindbending vision or otherwise. He says he "wasn't so happy" about the creative decision to leave Michael and Walt off the island and focus on others.

"I was hurt, really hurt," says Perrineau. "I told myself I had to watch the show, so I at least knew what was going on in case I was brought back, but then I was like, why? I never knew what was going on before. Why should I start trying to figure it out now?"

Instead of waiting by the phone to hear if his character would return to the series, Perrineau moved on to other projects, including a part in the film 28 Weeks Later and a role in the TV pilot Demons. When Demons didn't get picked up, that made room in Perrineau's schedule to get Lost again.

"I started with Lost, so I really want to see Michael until the end," says Perrineau. "I don't know what that means. I guess I won't know what that means until the end. I just know I didn't want Michael and Walt to get on that boat and that be it. That didn't seem so cool."

Perrineau believes Lost masterminds Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof really do have a plan for Michael, and he thinks it may finally come together now that he has returned to the fray. Of all the questions Perrineau has about his character, the one thing he is most interested to know is surprisingly simple.

"It seems like all the other characters on the island have dealt with redemption, in some form or another," Perrineau says. "But not Michael. He's only ever contended with being a father. The thing I want to know is: Why was Michael put on the island in the first place?"

Now that Perrineau's back, maybe he will get his answer.

Source: The Australian