Charlotte Lewis (Lost):
Dr. Charlotte Staples Lewis is a fictional character on the ABC television series Lost played by Rebecca Mader. Lewis was introduced in the second episode of season four and is a cultural anthropologist hired on a mission to the island where Oceanic Flight 815 crashed. Charlotte's name is a tribute to C. S. Lewis, the famous Christian apologist author and scholar best known for writing The Chronicles of Narnia series as well as multiple Christian classics including Mere Christianity.[1] Originally conceived as an American, Charlotte was changed to English after the producers were impressed with Mader's audition where she used an English accent.
On the Island she is initially held hostage by Locke (Terry O'Quinn), until he agrees for her to switch places with another person on Charlotte's mission. She helps prevent poison gas from being released over the Island, and develops a relationship with Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies).
As a spy on the freighter, Michael Dawson (Harold Perrineau) discovers Charlotte has two sisters, was born in Essex, England, and grew up in Bromsgrove with her parents.[2] However in the fourth season finale, she comments that she is looking for where she was born.[3] She went to University of Kent for her undergraduate degree and earned a doctoral degree in cultural anthropology from the University of Oxford. While in Tunisia, she picks up a newspaper where she reads Oceanic Flight 815 has been found, and she can not believe it. She goes to an excavation site, in the Sahara Desert, and discovers the remains of a polar bear, which has a collar bearing a DHARMA Initiative logo. Charlotte is selected along with Daniel Faraday, Miles Straume (Ken Leung), and Frank Lapidus (Jeff Fahey), to work on a mission to the island where the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 had crashed. En route, she is forced to eject from the helicopter during a lightning storm.[2]
Charlotte arrives on the island on December 23, 2004, where she encounters Locke and the other survivors who believe the people from the freighter are dangerous. They remove her tracking device so that they cannot be found by other people from the freighter, then place the tracker on their dog, Vincent, who runs off. She maintains that she is there to rescue them, however Locke does not believe her. Charlotte later spots a flare that she says belongs to a member of her team. When no one wants to investigate, Charlotte becomes impatient and begins to go off on her own, leading Ben (Michael Emerson), a man who lived on the Island before the plane crash, to shoot her. She is wearing a bullet proof vest and survives, forcing Ben to reveal that the mission of Charlotte's team is actually to find him.[2] The group go to the Barracks, where they encounter other survivors from the plane crash, Kate Austen (Evangeline Lilly) and Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews), and Miles, who has been brought to switch places with Charlotte.[4] While at the beach that night, she tests Daniel's memory with playing cards, noting he has made progress when he can remember two out of three cards. Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) and Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell) force her to call the freighter, and learn that the helicopter, which had left a few days ago with Sayid, Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick), and Frank, never arrived there.[5] That night, Charlotte and Daniel sneak off to one of the DHARMA Initiative stations, the Tempest, where they neutralize a potential source of poison gas.[6] While getting medical supplies at another of the DHARMA Initiative stations, the Staff, Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) notices Charlotte smiling after his wife Sun (Yunjin Kim) remarks in Korean that Charlotte knows Daniel fancies her because she is a woman. Jin confronts Charlotte, saying he will hurt Daniel if she doesn't cooperate. Jin makes her promise to take Sun off the Island with them when the helicopter returns.[7] When Daniel begins to ferry survivors across to the freighter, she kisses him, then watches on as he leaves. She disappears with the Island and its remaining inhabitants when Ben "moves" it to its new location.[3]
[edit] Development
During casting, Charlotte was described as "a hot twentysomething ... precocious, loquacious and funny... a very successful academic who also knows how to handle herself in the real world". She also has "lots of repressed and pent-up emotions" beneath the surface.[8] During auditions, the producers provide fake scenes, in order to keep new character's identities a secret.[9] Charlotte Staples Lewis is a reference to C. S. Lewis and "an important clue to places [the show was] going at the end of the [fourth] season".[1] The producers cast English Rebecca Mader because "she won [them] over with her charm and presence and charisma".[9] Whilst recording her audition, a producer who was with her noticed that all the shows on her resume were from the BBC, so asked her to read the audition again with a British accent, which "opened up another dimension [to the character that the producer's] hadn't foreseen", so they changed Charlotte from American to English.[9] When she was cast, Mader was unaware of whether she would be a guest star, or would develop into a regular.[9] She was only told that Charlotte is a "female version of Indiana Jones".[10] She watched all the previous episodes of Lost in the few weeks before she started working on the show.[11]
Charlotte's discovery of a polar bear with a DHARMA Initiative collar lead to speculation about how she is connected to the Island.[11] Mader herself is unaware of Charlotte's backstory beyond the flashback in "Confirmed Dead", noting "I feel like I'm almost in the same seat as the audience, like 'What the hell is going on?' and 'What the hell is going to happen next?', it's really exciting actually".[11] She had a professional dialect coach to help her speak Korean in "Something Nice Back Home".[10] Mader found Charlotte and Daniel's relationship "cute", adding "I think we've got really good chemistry ... [we] work pretty well together and he's really good".[12] Mader thought Charlotte was accepted by fans because she was "it was part of moving the whole storyline along where all these people were going to get off [the island]. It wasn't just adding new people and throwing them in and seeing if it stuck".[12] She did note that it was hard for fans to connect with Charlotte because "she arrived with an apparent mission and then didn't do it" and was disappointed to not get the opportunity to tell Charlotte's backstory during season four.[10]
[edit] Reception
According to Jon Lachonis of UGO, Charlotte has been well received by fans, describing her as "one of the most speculated-about characters".[11] Paige Albiniak of the New York Post praised the cast addition.[13] Chris Carabott described Charlotte, as well as the other new characters from the freighter, as "great" and "exciting".[14]
[edit] References
- ^ a b Jensen, Jeff, (February 20, 2008) "'Lost': Mind-Blowing Scoop From Its Producers", Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved on October 29, 2008.
- ^ a b c "Confirmed Dead". Stephen Williams, Writ. Drew Goddard & Brian K. Vaughan. Lost. ABC. 2008-02-07. No. 2, season 4.
- ^ a b "There's No Place Like Home: Parts 2 and 3". Jack Bender & Stephen Williams, Writ. Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse. Lost. ABC. 2008-05-29. No. 13 & 14, season 4.
- ^ "The Economist". Jack Bender, Writ. Edward Kitsis & Adam Horowitz. Lost. ABC. 2008-02-14. No. 3, season 4.
- ^ "Eggtown". Stephen Williams, Writ. Elizabeth Sarnoff & Greggory Nations. Lost. ABC. 2008-02-21. No. 4, season 4.
- ^ "The Other Woman". Eric Laneuville, Writ. Drew Goddard & Christina M. Kim. Lost. ABC. 2008-03-06. No. 6, season 4.
- ^ "Something Nice Home". Stephen Williams, Writ. Edward Kitsis & Adam Horowitz. Lost. ABC. 2008-05-01. No. 10, season 4.
- ^ Ausiello, Michael, (August 1, 2007) "Lost Introduces the Other Others!?", TV Guide. Retrieved on October 29, 2008.
- ^ a b c d Jensen, Jeff, (August 29, 2007) "'Lost': Five Fresh Faces", Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved on October 29, 2008.
- ^ a b c McPherson, Sam, "The Lostpedia Interview:Rebecca Mader", Lostpedia. Retrieved on October 29, 2008.
- ^ a b c d Lachonis, Jon "DocArzt", (February 13, 2008) "Rebecca Mader", UGO Networks. Retrieved on October 29, 2008.
- ^ a b Goldman, Eric, (August 6, 2008) "Lost: Charlotte's Island Life", IGN. Retrieved on October 29, 2008.
- ^ Albiniak, Paige, (October 29, 2008) "10 Reasons Why Lost is Found", New York Post. Retrieved on April 12, 2008.
- ^ Carabott, Chris, (February 6, 2008) "Four New Characters Join the Cast", IGN. Retrieved on October 29, 2008.
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