Lost Showrunner Responds to Allegations of Racism, Toxicity on Set: ‘I Failed’

Lost co-creator and co-showrunner Damon Lindelof admitted he “failed” to create a safe workplace as a new book excerpt details a slew of allegations of a racist, toxic workplace on the set of the ABC hit.

The excerpt, from Maureen Ryan’s Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood, ran in Vanity Fair today and details allegations that paint the set, under co-showrunners Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, as “racist,” “sexist,” abusive,” “cruel,” and “hostile,” according to adjectives that Ryan says came up frequently in her reporting. 

“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,” Lindelof said in one of his interviews for the book.

Among the many allegations in the long excerpt were claims of racial bias in the writing, which star Harold Perrineau, who played single father Michael Dawson, spoke about.

“It became pretty clear that I was the Black guy. Daniel [Dae Kim] was the Asian guy. And then you had Jack and Kate and Sawyer,” Perrineau said, adding that the attitude extended to promotional photo shoots as well, where actors of color were allegedly asked to stand in the back row or out of frame.

An unnamed writer for the show added that “it’s not that they didn’t write stories for Sayid [an Iraqi character] or Sun and Jin [Korean characters],” but still recalled comments like “nobody cares about these other characters. Just give them a few scenes on another beach.”

Perrineau also brought up specific concerns with the way Michael’s storyline was handled early in Season 2, after his son Walt is kidnapped by a group called The Others. He said in the original draft of the second episode of the season, Michael barely asked about his missing son.

“I don’t think I can do that,” he said. “I can’t be another person who doesn’t care about missing Black boys, even in the context of fiction, right? This is just furthering the narrative that nobody cares about Black boys, even Black fathers.”

Perrineau said he took these concerns to Cuse and Lindelof in a phone call, where he recalled telling them, “If you’re going to use me, let’s work. I’m here to work. I’m good at my job and I’ll do anything you want. Except be ‘the Black guy’ on your show.” 

The episode was revised to include flashbacks from Michael’s pre-island life, where they were initially focused on Sawyer’s, but he only had a couple of “14-hour, 18-hour days” to shoot them, as opposed to the several days spent shooting Sawyer’s flashbacks. Later, just a couple weeks before filming the second season finale, Perrineau said Cuse informed him that his character would not be returning.

“I was fucked up about it. I was like, ‘Oh, I just got fired, I think,’ ” Perrineau recalled. “I was like, ‘Wait a minute, what’s happening?’ [Cuse] said, ‘Well, you know, you said to us, if we don’t have anything good for you, you want to go.’ I was just asking for equal depth.”

“I was fucked up about it. I was like, ‘Oh, I just got fired, I think.’

Cuse, meanwhile, said what happened in Michael’s storyline had “nothing to do” with race, and claimed to have never had a conversation with Perrineau that touched on race. He said Lindelof relayed Perrineau’s concerns about the script to him, and changes were made, in part, because of the actor’s feedback.

“We heard his concerns and made changes to address them in the second episode of Season 2, and as we moved through Season 2 we reflected Michael’s character as caring deeply about finding his missing son at every possible opportunity,” he said.

“I do not believe [Harold] is in any way personally to blame for the way his role changed,” Cuse added.

Ryan reports that multiple sources who spoke to her for the book recalled hearing Lindelof say he fired Perrineau because he felt the actor had accused him of racism. Lindelof, when informed of the allegations, denied “ever” saying that.

“What can I say? Other than it breaks my heart that that was Harold’s experience,” Lindelof said. “And I’ll just cede that the events that you’re describing happened 17 years ago, and I don’t know why anybody would make that up about me.”

“Every single actor had expressed some degree of disappointment that they weren’t being used enough,” he added of Perrineau’s other concerns. “That was kind of part and parcel for an ensemble show, but obviously there was a disproportionate amount of focus on Jack and Kate and Locke and Sawyer — the white characters. Harold was completely and totally right to point that out. It’s one of the things that I’ve had deep and profound regrets about in the two decades since. I do feel that Harold was legitimately and professionally conveying concerns about his character and how significant it was that Michael and Walt — with the exception of Rose — were really the only Black characters on the show.”

A Toxic Writers’ Room

In addition to Perrineau’s struggles on the show, several others spoke of a toxic environment within the writers’ room, one that included racist and sexist comments. Among them, according to the report: someone saying to another writer that “no grandparent wants a slanty-eyed grandchild” in response to hearing about someone on staff adopting an Asian child, and a racist comment about actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje that suggests he “steals” wallets.

“I can only describe it as hazing. It was very much middle school and relentlessly cruel,” Monica Owusu-Breen, who was a writer on Season 3, said. “And I’ve never heard that much racist commentary in one room in my career.”

When the issue of Perrineau’s exit came up, multiple sources remembered hearing Lindelof say that he “called me racist, so I fired his ass,” to which “everyone laughed,” Owusu-Breen said.

“There was so much shit, and so much racist shit, and then laughter. It was ugly,” Owusu-Breen continued. “I was like, ‘I don’t know if they’re perceiving this as a joke or if they mean it.’ But it wasn’t funny. Saying that was horrible.”

Owusu-Breen also remembered pushing back against the violent death that Cuse apparently wanted for Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s character, Mr. Eko, who was ultimately beaten to death by the Smoke Monster.

“Carlton said something to the effect of, ‘I want to hang him from the highest tree. God, if we could only cut his dick off and shove it down his throat.’ At which point I said, ‘You may want to temper the lynching imagery, lest you offend.’ And I was very clearly angry,” she said.

In response, Cuse said in the excerpt, “I never, ever made that statement… and this exchange never happened. To further add to this lie and suggest that someone was fired as a result of a statement that I never made is completely false.”

“I can only describe it as hazing. It was very much middle school and relentlessly cruel.

Javier Grillo-Marxuach, who left the series after the second season, said the writers’ room “was a predatory ecosystem with its own carnivorous megafauna.” He released his own statement (which can be read in full here) after the publication of the excerpt, saying, “though I did not witness every incident in Burn It Down, I can confirm that the behavior she reports took place constantly during my tenure on the show.”

“Being part of a hypocrisy, even a useful one, eventually becomes too painful. This rage has truly scarred me. I am done paying that price for ‘Darlton’s’ ego,” he added. “In the words of Howard Beale, ‘I just ran out of bullshit.’ “

Writer-producer Melinda Hsu Taylor said in the report that she learned to keep eyeliner at her desk at work, as “You don’t want to have to go to the bathroom to redo your eyeliner. If you cry at work, you don’t want people to see that you’ve been crying.”

“Damon once said, ‘I don’t trust any writer who isn’t miserable, because that tells me you don’t care,’ ” Hsu said. 

Lindelof said he was “shocked and appalled and surprised” to hear about these and other allegations about the behavior in the writers’ room. 

“I just can’t imagine that Carlton would’ve said something like that, or some of those attributions, some of those comments that you [shared]—I’m telling you, I swear, I have no recollection of those specific things,” he said. “And that’s not me saying that they didn’t happen. I’m just saying that it’s literally baffling my brain—that they did happen and that I bore witness to them or that I said them. To think that they came out of my mouth or the mouths of people that I still consider friends is just not computing.”

Cuse said he didn’t hear the offensive comments that were allegedly brought up, and said “I deeply regret that anyone at Lost would have to hear them. They are highly insensitive, inappropriate, and offensive.”

“It breaks my heart to hear it. It’s deeply upsetting to know that there were people who had such bad experiences,” Cuse added. “I did not know people were feeling that way. No one ever complained to me, nor am I aware that anybody complained to ABC Studios. I wish I had known. I would have done what I could to make changes.”

Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood will be available on June 6.

Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.