Nestor Carbonell

On the third season of ‘Lost,’ we were introduced to Nestor Carbonell’s (‘Bates Motel’,‘The Dark Knight’) Richard and fans loved trying to figure out his character. He appeared throughout multiple timelines in the series looking the same and no one was quite sure what to make of this immortal characters. Carbonell was recently asked about the series which made him a household name during shooting for ‘Midnight, Texas.’

When asked about the best part about working on ‘Lost,’ Carbonell replied:

“I think for me, probably, it was getting to shoot my backstory episode. Where I found out my origin story. Because it was like a contained episode and it felt like its own movie. I shot it with Tucker Gates, who I later went to shoot Bates Motel with–he was a producer and director on that. And we shot that it felt like usually most episodes on Lost, and typically on network TV are around 8 days. It ended up being a 13-day shoot. Because we had horseback riding stuff out of sequence, we had to come back and do [more]. All told it may have been longer than 13. So, it felt like a little film. Not knowing for 4 years who I was and then finally finding out was great.”

Fans weren’t the only ones who were finally thrilled to see who exactly Richard was in “Ab Aeterno.” The episode title translates from Latin to “From Eternity” and is quite fitting for the character. What I find interesting is even the actor was kept in the dark as to who exactly his role was for his run on the series.

As to how he had to portray the character we ended up seeing on the small screen, the actor had to guess about his origin as the showruners kept the details to themselves:

“I was so wrong. I had guessed so wrong. But the fun thing about Lost, it was a great exercise in just trusting the moment, trusting the director of the week–who had been told more than you had as an actor—how to navigate it emotionally. We weren’t guided by facts. As actors, we’d have to write down our history and be like, ‘OK I say this because, alright I’m going to guess this.’ Because as long as we were able to ground it it didn’t really matter… we’ll worry about the real mythology later. It was a great exercise as an actor.”

At least his talent was able to shine through for viewers and hit all of his moments in a way that his portrayal felt natural when his origin was finally revealed.

Did you find it interesting that actors like Nestor Carbonell had no idea behind the characters they were playing on ‘Lost’? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Source: Cinema Blend