Lost: Dominic Monaghan interview

Presenting our new eyes and ears from across the pond, Fiona Morrow, bringing us all the latest TV news....

Over the coming weeks I will be bringing you the lowdown on what's happening in your favourite US TV shows with interviews, opinion and gossip. My own relationship with the small screen began as an assistant film editor at the BBC working on everything from Tomorrow's World to The Late Show. The epiphany that there must be more to life came at 4am one morning as I was carefully laying teacup rattles on the soundtrack of an episode of Miss Marple. The pen being mightier than the splicer, I became a TV critic for London's Time Out magazine for five years, before going freelance for papers such as The Independent and The Sunday Times, and magazines as diverse as The Radio Times and Sight & Sound.

Now based on the west coast of North America, I may struggle to find out if Pete Burns and George Galloway see eye to eye on lipgloss, but the upside is that I don't have to wait months to see the next episode of Lost.... I'm looking forward to being your eyes and ears on this s ide of the pond - and I promise not to give too many of those juicy plot secrets away.

After playing a hobbit in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Dominic Monaghan was eager for a role involving less hair. He found it as the washed up, junkie rock musician Charlie on the hit US television show Lost.

LOVEFiLM: Was it hard to pick a role after Lord of the Rings?

Dominic Monaghan: I've been struggling for a long time with being type cast as an adorable, sweet, kind-hearted, Furby-type character, which I didn't feel was something I needed to do again. But it was my agent who asked if wanted to do television, and I wasn't incredibly interested because I've done British TV and I thought that I knew the beast.

LF: What changed your mind?

DM: One Friday he sent me the first season of Alias, which was [Lost co-creator] J.J. Abrams' big show at the time. I really liked it - I thought it was a classy piece of television. So I went in and met J.J. and he explained that he saw Lost as a weekly film that just happens to be on television. It felt like a sophisticated piece of work.

LF: Nothing like your experience on Hetty Wainthrop Investigates, then?

DM: I felt constricted by that role, which was pushing me into a corner. I was born in Germany, and moved around as a kid until I was 11. I never really felt any true identity to any country. I never have. And I felt that in Britain I was being bottlenecked into this English regional actor thing.

LF: What was it that attracted you to Charlie?

DM: He was a religious guy who had a good relationship with his God - whoever that is - and that kind of fell apart. He has issues with his family, he has trust issues with women; he's a complex kind of guy. He uses humour and comedy as a deflection for his insecurities. And when you found him on the island, he was literally at a crossroad in his life. And, for want of a better phrase, he is lost in his mind.

LF: Did your experience of working on Lord of the Rings prove helpful on Lost?

DM: I was certainly aware of how to handle the politics of an ensemble cast, and I was also prepared for the huge interest in us when the show became huge overnight.

LF: You may be marooned on a desert island in Lost, but you're effectively stuck on Hawaii for months with the rest of the cast. Do you all get along ok?

DM: I'm friends with everyone. Myself and Naveen Andrews are really close because we're both British and we both enjoy a lot of British humour. We're constantly quoting Steve Coogan, people from The Office and Monty Python, which goes completely over everyone else's heads.

But the great thing is that on any given day you can jump into someone else's life for a while and chat with them and find out what's going on. And then you might not see them for a week.

LF: Do you watch the show go out?

DM: That's the best bit. We do this thing called "the gathering" every Wednesday where we all get together to watch the show. And depending on whose flashback it is, they play host. Harold Perrineau gives us soul food, I hired a sushi chef...

LF: Do you think with Lost, you've finally put your hobbit image behind you?

DM: Well, at least complete strangers no longer come up to me on the street and pat me on the head.

Interview by Fiona Morrow

http://www.lovefilm.com/features/detail.html?section_name=interview&editorial_id=2157

[Based on photos accompanying the article, this was published during Lost's second season.]