IGN talks to the stars of ABC's new sci-fi brainteaser about comparisons to Lost.
by Matt Fowler
[Part 1, dealing with Joseph Fiennes, excised.]
We don't know much about Dominic Monaghan's FlashForward character yet and, under threat of ABC Ninja Assassins, he couldn't tell us all that much. We know that he and Jack Davenport's character, Lloyd Simcoe (the lead character in Robert J. Sawyer novel, btw), are colleagues in science, but that's all. In some of the future episode footage that aired during the pilot last Thursday, it seemed as if Monaghan's character was a bit more sinister than some of the character's he'd played in the past. What led the actor to take on this darker role? "It was something that I wanted to do. I always want to try and play something as different as possible from the last thing I've done," remarked Monaghan. "So when I sat down with the guys and they said, 'Well, what do you want to do next?' I told them that it was very important to me, if I'm in episodic television again, to play a character as different from the character I played in Lost. And they said, 'I think we can do that.' This guy (Monaghan's character) is 'in the know' and he is kind of a really guy who's not phased or freaked out by anything. He's also one of the smartest guys around alongside Lloyd. I think they're the two smartest guys in the western world in terms of science. It's a really fun role."
Monaghan himself had some very fun panel appearances during Comic-Con '09, for both FlashForward and Lost. "That was fun. Very fun," admitted Monaghan. "I jumped from FlashForward onto a Lost panel the next day. Both of those reveals were kind of interesting because for FlashForward I came on for two minutes and didn't answer a question. And then on Lost they did like a whole hour thing and I only came on for the last forty seconds. It's nice to know that people are interested in seeing what you're doing."
As popular as Monaghan is with the Comic-Con crowd, did he ever attempt to head down to the expo floor? "Elijah (Wood) and I went down to the show floor a couple years ago," smiled Monaghan. "We got Stormtrooper helmets and we walked around buying comics in Stormtrooper helmets. So we could get away with it. This year I had a Godzilla mask, so I went over to the Star Wars section and played a new game, I bought some Spider-Man comics. The whole time in the mask."
There's been a ton of buzz about FlashForward being "the next Lost" – with show creators David Goyer and Marc Guggenheim insisting that it isn't. Seeing as how Monaghan was actually on Lost, what did he think about the hype? "I think the reason they want to say that this is not Lost is because some of the model fits the show," said Monaghan. "This show wouldn't have had the wings that it's had if not for Lost. It starts with a big world event and it has a massive ensemble cast and it's on the same network. I don't think it will get as deeply immersed into that particular world as Lost did though. I think Lost, to a certain extent, feels like a different world. Whereas this show still feels like our world. It still feels like the same rules apply. Like gravity and physics. Whereas in Lost, people could be dead and then show up."
