Why One Lost Star Cringes While Watching The Early Seasons

Evangeline Lilly, who starred as Kate Austen on Lost, says she can’t watch early seasons of the series without cringing at her own acting.

Evangeline Lilly, who starred as Kate Austen on Lost, explains why she still cringes while watching early seasons of the series. Created by J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, and Jeffrey Lieber, Lost was a sci-fi drama series that ran from 2004 to 2010. The critically acclaimed show followed the survivors of an airliner crash on a mysterious island, and was known for its use of flashbacks, flashforwards, and “flash-sideways” to alternate timelines. Though Lost only ran for six seasons, it has had a lasting impact on genre television and popular culture as a whole.

In an interview with the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Lost star Evangeline Lilly says that re-watching early seasons of the show make her cringe.

Her opinion changes by the time Lost hits season 3, for one big reason. Read Lilly’s full comment below:

“We would have LOST parties where the cast would get together to watch the show, and when it would be a Kate-centric episode, I would wanna curl in a hole and die, ’cause I knew I was bad. And I still to this day will stand by the fact that I can watch the first couple seasons and I cringe, because I’m not very good. And I do feel like season three was a turning point, where I went from ‘panicked, figure it out, just shoot from the hip, feel it, go with my gut,’ to ‘I hate this, I don’t wanna do this, get me out of here,’ to ‘oh, I guess if I’m here, I’m stuck, and I’m gonna stay, I should figure it out.’ And that was in season three. And I started to actually try to learn my craft.”

Related: LOST’s Divisive Ending Is Saved By One Crucial Aspect

How Lost Impacted Evangeline Lilly’s Career

Though Lilly began acting as early as 2002 when she was 23, it wasn’t until she was cast on Lost that her career began to take off. Lost was Lilly’s first major, notable role, as well as her first series regular job ever. Though Lilly cringes at her work in the first few seasons on the series, Lost was a very early stepping stone in her career, and she is far from the only celebrity to look back on their early work with embarrassment.

Despite Lilly’s self-deprecating view of her acting, she received a lot of acclaim for her performance as Kate, leading to Kate becoming one of the longest-lasting and most intriguing characters on the series. When Lost came to an end in 2010, Lilly began to work in major film franchises, starting in 2013 with her role as Tauriel in The Hobbit trilogy. She would go on to be cast as Hope van Dyne in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2015, a role she continues to play in the new film Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

While Lilly might not look back fondly on early seasons of Lost, it remains a big part of pop culture. Viewership of the series began to decline in later seasons, as many thought that Lost had gotten too confusing and needlessly complicated. Seasons 1 and 2 hold the highest viewership counts. Despite Lilly cringing at her initial performance, there’s no question that without feeling her way through early seasons of Lost, she would not be the household name she is today.

Next: Lost Needs A Successful Spin-Off To Repair Its Image

Source: Happy Sad Confused