Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof addressed allegations that the writer's room for the hit ABC show was a racist and sexist environment.
Vanity Fair published an excerpt from Maureen Ryan's upcoming book titled Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood, which focuses on the behind-the-scenes drama on Lost, mainly regarding the racial prejudices certain writer's and producers had on the show, which ran on ABC from 2004 to 2010. In response to the allegations against himself and producer Carlton Cuse, Lindelof claimed that he was overwhelmed by the number of responsibilities he had on the show, and admitted that he failed as a leader. "My level of fundamental inexperience as a manager and a boss, my role as someone who was supposed to model a climate of creative danger and risk-taking but provide safety and comfort inside of the creative process - I failed in that endeavor," he said.
Lindelof continued, "I was like, OK, as long as there are one or two [writers] who don’t look and think exactly like me, then, then I’m OK. I came to learn that was even worse. For those specific individuals, forget about the ethics or the morality involved around that decision, but just talking about the human effect of being the only woman or the only person of color and how you are treated and othered - I was a part of that, a thousand percent."
In Ryan's book, several Lost writers share stories of offensive comments being made in the writer's room, including calling an Asian child "slanty-eyed" and implying that actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje is someone who "steals" wallets. Additionally, when a woman once entered the writer's room carrying an HR binder for the studio, a male writer reportedly said, "Why don't you take off your top and tell us about it?"
These comments, coupled with a writer also referring to Locke (Terry O'Quinn), Jack (Matthew Fox), Kate (Evangeline Lilly), and Sawyer (Josh Holloway), all white characters, as the show's "hero characters," made various writers and actors feel discriminated against and uncomfortable while working on the series. "We were discriminated against on the daily," Monica Owusu-Breen, a writer on Season 3 of Lost, said. "Maybe they just didn’t like our writing, but it’s hard to tell if you’re discriminated against on the daily."
Lindelof, who has since created shows such as The Leftovers and HBO's Watchmen, emphasized that he has matured since his time on Lost. "The way that I conduct myself and the way that I treat other humans who I am responsible for and a manager of is a by-product of all the mistakes that were made.…I have significantly evolved and grown, and it shouldn’t have had to come at the cost and the trauma of people that I hurt on Lost."
Source: Vanity Fair