Category Archives: Ben (Michael Emerson)

Audition tape for “Fringe” with LOST cameos

Posted on July 27, 2011 | Leave a comment

At the “Fringe” panel at Comic-Con on Saturday, they played a (joke) video showing auditions for the role of Peter Bishop. Among the would-be actors in the tape are LOST alum Rebecca Mader, Damon Lindelof, Michael Emerson, and Jorge Garcia.

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Posted in Ben (Michael Emerson), Charlotte (Rebecca Mader), Comic-Con 2011, Damon and Carlton, Funny, Hurley (Jorge Garcia)

Micheal Emerson talks about the philosophy of LOST

Posted on July 24, 2011 | Leave a comment

This video has Michael Emerson’s complete talk at Stanford’s Film and Philosophy conference on January 15, 2011.

via What About ME?, a Michael Emerson fan blog.

Michael Emerson: The Philosophy of Lost (Jan. 15, 2011) from Jeremy Sabol on Vimeo.

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Posted in Ben (Michael Emerson), Interviews

“Alcatraz” and “Person of Interest” at 2011 Comic-Con

Posted on July 23, 2011 | Leave a comment

Alcatraz promo photo

On Wednesday night, Comic-Con showed sneak previews of the series pilots for “Person of Interest,” starring Michael Emerson (Ben), and “Alcatraz,” starring Jorge Garcia (Hurley) — both produced by J.J. Abrams.

The blog Television Blend saw the pilots and liked both of them:

There are two things that set Person of Interest above other shows like these: Jim Caviezel and Michael Emerson… Emerson’s character has some of the smarts of Ben Linus, without the creepy…. I want to see more of these two on screen, so I’ll definitely be looking out for this one …

I suspect Alcatraz is going to appeal to Fringe fans …. I’m going to be vague with the premise here because one of the biggest strengths of the pilot is the way the story’s layers are peeled back a little bit at a time as the episode moves forward….

While …. we’re meant to take [Garcia’s] character seriously, there are some mild shades of Hurley thrown in there for some light comic relief…. A lot of questions are raised in the pilot, but the introduction offers enough intriguing clues to have me wanting more.

Read the full review.

Hollywood Report did interviews with Jorge Garcia and Elizabeth Sarnoff, who was a writer on LOST and is now the showrunner (TV industry jargon for the boss) of Alcatraz.

When asked how Alcatraz is different from LOST, Jorge replied:

I believe I’m going to be a lot less sweaty! There are no planes crashing and it’s not in the jungle! [Laughs.] I play a historian/comic book guy/Alcatraz expert. You don’t want people to hunt to try and find what the next Lost is anymore. Let Lost be Lost and now find what Alcatraz is. Don’t chase Lost; love it and put it to bed. You can bring out the DVDs whenever you want but don’t go to Alcatraz looking for Lost. There may be some elements that will remind you since it comes from the same family but it’s going to be it’s own thing.

Elizabeth Sarnoff also answered a couple of LOST-related questions:

THR: Are you prepared for the inevitable Lost questions?

Sarnoff: Absolutely. I worked on the show for a long time and there are a lot of people on our show that worked on it: Jack Bender, Jorge Garcia, J.J. Abrams. I welcome that: this is our past and this is our present.

THR: How does Alcatraz compare to Lost?

Sarnoff: I don’t think it’s like Lost because the show at heart is a procedural show. We have a story end to our show where we’re going to catch a bad guy every week as well as a really bad guy from Alcatraz, so it’s a very different show. Alcatraz is going to feel like it moves a hell of a lot faster because we have a lot of story to get through.

Here are some clips of both shows, along with reactions of fans at Comic-Con:

A few more clips from “Person of Interest” are here.

Person of Interest is supposed to start on Setember 22. Alcatraz starts sometime in early 2012 — I don’t think they announced a date yet.

Official sites for the shows: Alcatraz and Person of Interest.

For a complete list of all the LOST-related events at Comic-Con 2011, see @jopinionated‘s article on TVOvermind.

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Posted in Alcatraz, Ben (Michael Emerson), Comic-Con 2011, Hurley (Jorge Garcia), Writers, producers, directors, etc.

New role for Terry O’Quinn in “Hallelujah”

Posted on April 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

Terry O'Quinn as Locke in LOST 6x04 "The Substitute"

Terry O’Quinn has been cast in a new television musical drama about a Texas town torn apart by the forces of good and evil. (Hmmm … sounds familiar!)

O’Quinn will play the villain, “a charming yet wholly corrupt local millionaire who virtually owns the town.” That’s interesting, because Michael Emerson, in HIS new show, will be playing a billionaire (though apparently one on the side of good). So both of these actors are getting to play men with money. It must be their destiny! Ahem.

I don’t know what this means for the fate of Odd Jobs, the show that was originally going to star O’Quinn and Emerson and has now been delayed. With both of them starring in their own shows, it doesn’t look good for an O’Quinn/Emerson reunion show anytime soon.

I love musicals, though, so this is exciting news. I wonder if O’Quinn himself will sing. He’s quite a good singer — something I hadn’t expected before I saw a couple of video clips. Take a look:

O’Quinn singing “If I Loved You” in a 1991 made-for-TV movie

O’Quinn singing about being a “bad Daddy” (and proving that he’s been playing villains for a VERY long time)

Hallelujah will be produced by Marc Cherry and Sabrina Wind (Desperate Housewives) and will star Jesse L. Martin (Ed Green in Law & Order) as a stranger who comes to town “bringing justice, peace and possibly restoring faith.” Restoring faith — sounds like another LOST theme.

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Posted in Ben (Michael Emerson), Hallelujah, Locke (Terry O'Quinn), Odd Jobs, Singing and/or dancing

Michael Emerson: The good news and the bad news

Posted on April 10, 2011 | Leave a comment

Jim Caviezel and Michael Emerson filming "Person of Interest"

First, the bad news. The television show Odd Jobs — which was supposed to bring Michael Emerson and Terry O’Quinn back together in a J.J. Abrams-produced project — has been delayed until next season.

The good news is that Michael Emerson has been cast as the lead in another new J.J. Abrams show, Person of Interest. He’s going to play a billionaire who hires a presumed-dead ex-CIA agent to catch violent criminals in New York.

This, strangely, combines plot elements of two other planned LOST-alumni shows: Jorge Garcia’s Alcatraz, which will be about a group of prisoners and guards who mysteriously disappeared and then showed up again 30 years later, and Odd Jobs, where Emerson and O’Quinn were to be ex-black-ops agents.

I wonder what will happen to Odd Jobs if Person of Interest becomes a hit. It seems unlikely that Emerson could star in two shows at once. I’ll be glad to see him in anything, but I really wanted to see him reunited with Terry O’Quinn.

Co-starring with Emerson are Jim Caviezel (Jesus in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ), Taraji P. Henson (Queenie in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), and Natalie Zea (Winona in Justified). The writer is Jonathan Nolan, who wrote the story on which the movie Memento was based, and the screenplay for Dark Knight.

New York Magazine listed it as one of the 20 most exciting pilots of the upcoming TV season, even though they gave it only a 50-50 chance of actually getting on the air.

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Posted in Ben (Michael Emerson), J.J. Abrams, Locke (Terry O'Quinn), Odd Jobs, Person of Interest

Michael Emerson to speak on “The Philosphy of LOST”

Posted on December 12, 2010 | Leave a comment

Michael Emerson with Emmy in 2009

If you’re in the Palo Alto area in January, you can hear Michael Emerson speaking at Stanford on “The Philosophy of LOST.”

It’s going to be on Saturday, January 15, 2011 at 6:00 pm. on the Stanford campus, as part of a film and philosophy conference.

Admission is free and open to the public.

Official Stanford announcement. Via Meet Michael Emerson

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Posted in After LOST, Ben (Michael Emerson), Interviews

Michael Emerson, Puritan leader

Posted on October 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

Michael Emerson as John Winthrop in PBS Frontline "God in America"

Michael Emerson as John Winthrop in "God in America"

I had taped the PBS/American Experience/Frontline show God in America and started watching it last night. I didn’t know much about it, just that it had sounded interesting and worth watching. I didn’t know who was in it.

A little while in, there was a segment on John Winthrop, the governor of the Puritan colony in Plymouth. The actor playing Winthrop was introduced in a quick shot, his face mostly obscured in shadows. The show then cut away from Winthrop for a few minutes, and when he returned to the screen, he was still wrapped in shadows. I noticed the acting — it stood out because the actor was giving a dramatic reading, and I noticed his eyes because they were slightly bugged out. But I didn’t put two and two together. A few more beats passed before it suddenly hit me: OMG that’s Michael Emerson!

Here’s a clip of his segment:

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

If the clip doesn’t work, try the PBS website here: God in America. Michael Emerson’s segment is in Part One “A New Adam,” starting at 12:40, where you can hear his voice reciting the famous line about a city on the hill.