Blood Brothers. Amy Rickman
the intensity of the set, but his tranquility was to be broken by a phone call informing him of some truly tragic news: Boone was to die in the next episode. ‘[It was] pretty devastating… Thank God I already had four glasses of really good Pinot in me,’ said Ian.
The news seemed to come completely out of the blue for him as he was actually in the midst of searching for a permanent base in Hawaii: ‘I almost bought a house there but, two days before I was going to fly back to look at one, I found out that my character was being killed off.’
He flew back to film and was less than thrilled about it: the death scene involved him falling off a cliff while inside a small aircraft which had crash-landed on the island sometime before their airplane had done the same. Boone sustains massive internal injuries from the fall, including a collapsed lung. Resident Island doctor Jack (played by Matthew Fox) attempts to save him by giving him a blood transfusion-by-sea urchin. If that sounds painful, Ian can definitely confirm that it was: ‘I was spacey and nauseous and a little pissed,’ he told Entertainment Weekly. ‘It’s hard walking a fine line between lucid and not lucid while Matthew Fox is ramming a needle into my chest.’ It was, in his words, ‘a long and exacerbating day simply because of the content and emotion, I’ll be the first to say. Matt Fox and I (but especially him) went through the wringer that day. I couldn’t wait to get it done but wanted to pay extremely close attention to the way in which that scene played out … We had a medical technician there to guide me in the right direction of how a human would react physically to those types of injuries; spanning from the collapsing of a lung to the moment of lucidity before someone dies. We got through but I think of it much.’
Boone’s demise was in Ian’s twentieth episode, called ‘Do No Harm’, which aired on 6 April 2005. His character’s final words were ‘Tell Shannon I…’
From the point of view of the Lost producers J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof – who had supported Ian so strongly in the beginning – it was absolutely necessary for Boone to die. Already they had almost killed several characters in the first season (Boone’s sister Shannon among them), but they needed to give the show some gravitas and up the stakes by proving to the audience that no one was truly safe. ‘It was a narrative imperative that we kill Boone,’ executive producer Carlton Cuse told Entertainment Weekly. ‘It sets in motion a chain of events leading to the season finale.’ Boone’s death enabled the conflict to develop between Jack and another character, Locke (played by Terry O’Quinn), which would be pivotal to the entire series.
Still, it was of little consolation to Ian, who felt as if he had been flung upside down on an emotional roller coaster. He was hurt but also grateful, sad but accepting, too – after all, on a show as new and experimental as Lost something had to give. He just didn’t quite understand why it had to be him.
His character’s death wasn’t the end of his association with Lost, though. He appeared in 10 episodes after his death, coming back in Shannon’s flashbacks over the course of a few episodes in Season Two and then he was back for the series finale in 2010.
He had to give credit to Lost, too – it had boosted his profile immensely. So much so that he discovered he had fans in some very strange places: ‘I’ve got a lot of letters from prison. Lost was a big prison show but it’s really crazy when you get the letter that says, “So, I’m getting out in three months, I’ve only been in for 17 years and I’d really like to meet you.”’ That must be pretty creepy for Ian!
In between appearances in Season One and the final Season Six, Ian didn’t really watch the programme: ‘When I left that show I needed to get on [with] my life. I wasn’t going to just sit and watch every single episode that they were producing; it was very bittersweet. And now, going back, I haven’t had time to watch five seasons of Lost. I wish I had, but it’s just not the case. I know they’re doing phenomenal work and what I have seen, it’s like no other television show.’ But that didn’t mean to say he wasn’t extremely grateful to have been a part of it, calling his year on the show the ‘greatest experience of the greatest year of my life.’ He was completely in awe of the work that J.J. Abrams and the rest of the Lost cast were doing – though understandably disappointed that he hadn’t been able to be part of the magic for longer.
When he received the script for the finale, he was amazed: ‘[it] weighed about three pounds!’ It was great fun for him to come back onto the show, albeit briefly, and he has great memories of his time on the beach: ‘[I loved] everything from being on a set with those phenomenally talented actors to watching rainstorms come, to looking at a 767 that’s completely torn apart on this deserted beach in the middle of nowhere to being a part of one of the most amazing, historic television shows ever made. I wish I had stayed on the show, but it all works out the way it does. To be able to go back there and have that experience, with all of those people whom I’ve known for so long, and to have Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse still want me around, was a really, really cool experience.’
Stefan: That’s the thing about Damon. He doesn’t get mad – he just gets even. (1.06, ‘Lost Girls’)
For Ian, the future was now uncertain. It was 2005, and he felt on top of the world – despite being killed off on Lost, it was still the biggest show around and his profile had never been higher. ‘It opened so many doors,’ he admitted, ‘but it definitely makes it harder to do any other show. It’s like when you break up with someone and start dating someone else… you’re always comparing the two.’ He was prepared to get picky again and only audition for shows he really wanted.
Yet before he could even think about auditioning for any other roles, disaster struck his home state. Hurricane Katrina hit the Louisiana coastline on 29 August 2005. The Category 5 hurricane was the costliest natural disaster in US history, with 1,836 confirmed fatalities and damage caused to property estimated at $81 billion USD. ‘I went back [home] 36 hours after the storm,’ he remembered (most of his family were still living in Mandeville, Louisiana at the time). ‘I couldn’t get hold of my dad and I was freaked out. My whole family was fortunate – no one got hurt but my brother lost everything.’
After he’d finished helping his brother rebuild as much as he could, Ian got involved with fund-raising for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. He was a proud supporter of Love Letters to the South, a unique book full of photographic and written tributes from celebrities such as Johnny Depp, Justin Timberlake and Jon Bon Jovi, with a portion of the proceeds going to the American Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity; he even donated his own photograph and note. At the book launch, Ian explained what he had written: ‘It was just a quick note to home with one of our favourite sayings down there: Laissez les bons temps rouler – let the good times roll. Which hopefully they will be rolling again soon down there.’
Even in the aftermath of the disaster, Ian still had to work. One of his first jobs post-Lost was in the movie Pulse (2006) with Kristen Bell and Christina Milian, which was filmed in the summer of 2005 in Romania. It was a remake of the Japanese horror film Kairo and Ian played Dexter, a computer hacker who realises that the previous owner of the machine he has recently purchased had stumbled upon a wireless signal that allowed spirits of the dead to travel to the world of the living. Even though this was a fairly flimsy horror-movie concept, it was a part that affected Ian quite deeply. He was always thinking about the role of electronics in our world, particularly our reliance on them and how that must be affecting our minds and bodies. ‘[Pulse] got me thinking about computers and electronics,’ he told People magazine. ‘We’re made up of energy, so who’s to say you can’t transmit through electrical means? If you could transmit yourself wirelessly, then it’s Armageddon pretty much.’ No one could accuse him of not being philosophical.
On its release Pulse was panned, with the website Rotten Tomatoes summing up critical opinion in one