Q&A with Naveen Andrews
The UK website Digital Spy recently sat down with Naveen Andrews for a revealing chat about his character and the future of Lost. Read on for all the F-bombs you can handle, or check out the source here.
What did you make of the season finale?
"I was really pleased with it, because it’s the closest we’ve come to season one in terms of the standard of excellence. They needed to get it back on track and they have."
You were quite critical of season three, weren’t you?
"So was everyone else, as far as I know. I’m not alone in that. It’s difficult not to feel proprietorial towards the work. When you feel a drop in quality, it would be dishonest to yourself if you didn’t acknowledge that."
What do you think the problems were?
"The writing. We all know what the executive producers, Damon [Lindelof] and Carlton [Cuse], were going through because they had this burden of an endless show. I don’t think it’s what Damon wanted in the first place. He always used to say to me ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we were a bit like the Sex Pistols and did just one season of great television and then bang, that’s it?’ Sort of smash and grab. Obviously you can’t do that on primetime network TV but he wanted a limit to the show. He managed to do a deal where he was able to achieve that. Now that we have an ending to aim towards, I think it’s inevitable the quality will get better."
What would have been your ideal number of seasons?
"Ideally, five, for me. Five or six. Actually it does work out to five because we’ve got shorter seasons now."
What have you learned from doing Lost? You seem to have found it a bit of a burden…
"That’s an interesting word we keep returning to. ‘The burden of writing’…"
‘The burden of Lost.’
"Come on, it’s not a f**king burden. You’re being paid, obviously - I don’t ever remember being paid in England, even though the quality was there with things like The Buddha of Suburbia. I don’t think it’s a burden being paid, but it’s a real discipline to play the same character over years rather than months or weeks. It requires a certain amount of stamina."
There are two seasons to go but each has fewer episodes. What does that mean for you, production-wise?
"It’s a shame because we’ve been f**ked by the strike. We have an impending one and we had the one with the writers, which came right in the middle of the season and meant we had a few months off and had to go back to work. It f**ked up our hiatus. The whole thing was like ‘oh, you just have to do six months in Hawaii instead of ten, then you can have the other six months to do films.’ Well it didn’t work out that way, did it? It looks like it won’t work out again."
What did you make of the flash-forwards this season?
"I thought it was a bonus, for me personally. It’s a challenge to be able to play a character in the present and then zoom ahead to a point when they may have undergone great changes. I felt in season four, Sayid was spiritually dead [in the future], and something awful happened to his soul. To be able to play that and then go back to the island, where he’s still quite active in life, was good."
How much are you told about the character, doing these future scenes?
"Absolutely f**k all."
Then how do you prepa..
"Christ only knows. I was talking to Jorge [Garcia, Hurley] about that yesterday. I was saying ‘I got my script a week and a half before we shot’ and he said ‘I got mine three days before we shot it’."
So you get no guidance on how Future Sayid is feeling?
"Absolutely not. I don’t know if this is a good thing or not, but at this point, the writers feel they can trust us with whatever we’re going to do with it."
As a viewer of the show, which I assume you are…
"No, I’m not. I only saw the pilot. But anyway, go ahead."
…which of the many twists do you want to find out the answer to?
"The foot with the f**king toe missing. What was that and is it going to come back? Is there going to be two feet next time, with a geezer on top as the rest of the body?"
What do you make of Harold Perrineau’s comments last week suggesting that race played a part in his exit?
"I was very pleased to see Harold back and very disappointed that it didn’t continue. But I can’t comment until I’ve read what he said - or if I’m honest, until I’ve spoken to Harold and heard what he says he f**king said!"
When we last spoke you said you knew how the show would end, "geographically" speaking.
"Yeah, the island. I still presume it’s going to be the island. I think season five’s going to be Matthew [Fox, Jack] rounding up us lot to go back to the island, or whoever he can get to go back - maybe some people don’t, because they can’t be f**king bothered - and they go back and then there’s this big kind of conflagration on the island. Will good triumph over evil? I don’t know. It’s just a rough idea."
So you know nothing solid about the future seasons, then?
"It’s been like this from day one. They’ve never told us anything."
Do you want to know?
"At first, yeah. It’s like your spiritual development. You’re like three steps forward, five steps back. You’d think after four years you’d be used to being kept in the dark but every now and then you do get frustrated and think ‘come on, for f**k’s sake, tell us something!’"
Once Lost is done, would you do a network series again?
"To be honest with you, I think you’ve got to go where the good writing is, whether it’s film or TV. There’s a lot of crap films around at the moment. So to answer the question, wherever the good writing is."
Would you be open to the possibility of doing a spinoff of Lost?
"I can’t believe they would do that. If they did it would be hilarious. Maybe it could be Locke… and Ben… and a baby! You know what I mean? Come on!"
So that’s a ‘no’ then.
"I just don’t think it’ll ever happen. It’s a preposterous question. If it happens then Damon should be shot!"
Wow does he come off like a douchebag. What’s with the mouth? Drop in quality? Uh, no, Naveen, there was not a drop in quality, you just had less screen presence. Dela with it you diva.
Comment by Node32774 — June 12, 2008 @ 10:02 am
I’ve never been one who’s believed the whole “Season 3 was crap” theories, but I’m not hard to please in the way of television. I’ve liked PLENTY of crap shows.
That being said, he does come off as an asshole in the few interviews I’ve seen of him. Like, seriously, a total prick.
That may not be reality, but it’s how I’ve seen it. The cursing didn’t bother me, but as the interview went on, it was like one F*ck for each answer. lol
Comment by Gary — June 12, 2008 @ 10:31 am
No matter how much we viewers may try to remember that these are fictional characters, it’s always a shock when the actor playing the character is revealed to be… different. Every interview with actors (whose characters I was invested in) that I’ve read / heard / seen has had at least some elements of that kind of surprise. Evangeline is SO not Kate, Matthew is SO not Jack, Michael is SO not Ben, and so on.
We need to remember, that for the actors, it’s basically just a job. A job that they may enjoy or hate, a job whose writing they may love or despise, a job that pays well or not enough, a job that will add polish to their career resume or that they may wish to forget about, but a job, nonetheless. With all the work involved, repeated takes of dramatic moments, blocking out scenes, memorization and then getting lines wrong, the endless waiting for the crew to set up shots, plus the fact that scenes are shot out of sequence, and not being involved in any scene that doesn’t include them… the result is they simply do not get anywhere near as absorbed into that fictional world as the viewer does, because they have seen not just the “man behind the curtain”, but all the mechanisms behind the artifice. So aside from not knowing where their character is going, it’s not very mysterious to them. And although they may well like and respect each other as actors, camaraderie is hard, because different combinations of actors may not see each other for days or weeks at a time because they don’t have any scenes scheduled to be shot together. And then you have the factor that actors in general tend to be creative, quirky, idiosyncratic folks… is it any wonder they don’t often meet our expectations when we interview a favorite actor/character?
Comment by Dr Shredder — June 12, 2008 @ 11:25 am
I like the guy. He’s terribly honest. And when he sounds rude and says words that require asterisks to protect the innocent, it’s partly because he sounds like a North Londoner.
I’d agree on the quality issue. Add into that that Sayid was sort of abandoned in Season 3 and I can’t blame him for being annoyed. But he does specify in this interview that the writing quality was not a talent thing. It was all about being able to plan a good story arc, which was impossible without an end date.
Comment by Ed Holden — June 12, 2008 @ 3:51 pm
How can he even critique the writing of the show if he’s never watched it and seen how it is presented as a whole to the viewer? I don’t even mind the cursing but his comments are totally unprofessional for an actor. I wouldn’t be surprised if his character is killed off before the final season.
Comment by lostintheboro — June 12, 2008 @ 10:52 pm
Yeah, if he’s never watched an episode, then how can he comment on its rise or drop in quality? I’ve done acting, and the process of rehearsing and filming a script is VERY different than that of watching the final product. If he doesn’t watch the show, then with all due respect to Mr. Andrews, he’s not really in a position to know if the writing was good or bad in season 3. And he’s also wrong in implying that a lot of people think it was bad. In my opinion, season 3 was the best of the 4 so far.
Comment by Tombo — June 13, 2008 @ 4:51 am
He sounds like a jerk, but he does a good job playing Sayid. I don’t get where these actors get off just bashing the writers…they are getting paid to play the part. I mean especially when the quality on lost has always been good.
Comment by adele — June 13, 2008 @ 1:42 pm
Wow, what a prick. Again I pity poor Darlton for having to put up with such b*tchy actors and drunks.
Comment by tomnook — June 15, 2008 @ 12:11 pm
First, a disclaimer…I love the character of Sayid and Naveen Andrews is a wonderful,complex actor. I was really offended at the overall tone of the interview. Is this really how he feels about the show? If so, my gosh, I’d hate to see it, but kill him off. Okay extreme…less screen time. I’ll have a hard time watching him after hearing the intense anyomosity. His language in the Digital Spy version of this interview is crass. It shows a lack of class. You can tell the truth without being foul. Show respect for yourself and your fans. He is getting paid a decent amount of money to be on a very successful series, something actors work towards and pray for…he’s unhappy with the situation? What does he gain by telling his fans. Actors are human too…I guess I am nieve in my thinking that if they are making their living (and being paid darn well to do so) doing what they love they can find a way to keep their grieviences with ‘management’ private (suck it up a bit for the money) and give fans what they really want…to hear scoop on the show, how much they love their jobs, and are greatful to their fans. Perhaps Naveen Andrews has aquired a bit of the chip Sayid wears on his shoulder as of season 4…or does Sayid now wear the chip Naveen Andrews had on his?
Comment by cmdh — June 16, 2008 @ 12:28 pm
Wow, what a jerk. It’s really too bad because he’s such a great actor. It’s like those rude brats in highschool who do nothing but fool around yet still get straight A’s without trying.
Comment by Wing — June 16, 2008 @ 5:35 pm
I’m just glad to see him express his fucking opinion freely. Does me heart good.
Comment by coco — June 18, 2008 @ 8:25 am
i like Sayid and i like Naveen, but i have to say i dont know why people are so down on season 3, im mad about Lost now, but i never watched the 1st 2 seasons, the idea of it going on so long put me off. but out of boredom through nothing else on tv on a sunday night in the UK i started watching season3 from the premiere and it really got me into lost, i had to buy the 1st 2 seasons and go on a marathon watching session to get caught up so i understood what was going on, but i always thought that season3 was a change of angle not a drop in quality.
There were some great moments in S3, Des, Eko, Locke, Jack, Saywer all had some great storylines. It just annoys me when people are so down on it. Lost wouldnt be where we are today without the shift that took place in S3. And one other thing, the best thing to come out of S3 was Ben, his character developement was awesome.
Comment by warren — June 18, 2008 @ 6:36 pm