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You all, everybody!
Dominic Monaghan is looking back on his shocking exit from “Lost” in an exclusive interview with The Post.
“I think it was time, really,” said the 48-year-old actor, who starred as recovering drug addict Charlie Pace on the hit ABC series.
“I really liked playing Charlie,” Monaghan continued, “but I got to a point about halfway through season three, when I was talking to [showrunner] Damon Lindelof and I said, ‘I’m either on drugs or off drugs, or I’m either looking after the baby or the baby’s in danger. And that’s kind of it. That’s where we’re going.'”
And Lindelof, who co-created the mystery series with J.J. Abrams and Jeffrey Lieber, felt the same about Monaghan’s place on the show.
“Damon agreed and said, ‘Yeah, I think we’ve kinda backed Charlie into a corner,'” Monaghan recalled. “But he said, ‘I think there’s a way that we can write an amazing storyline for you. It just means that you would leave.'”
“And I thought, ‘Well, that’s the best thing that I can do is have an amazing arc, leave, and then go off and live my life,'” the “Lord of the Rings” actor said. “So it just worked out perfectly, I think.”
Monaghan starred in the first three seasons of “Lost” alongside Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lily, Terry O’Quinn, Emilie de Ravin, Naveen Andrews, Jorge Garcia, Josh Holloway, Yunjin Kim, Daniel Dae Kim and Henry Ian Cusick.
While Charlie died in the Season 3 finale, Monaghan returned for several more episodes including the controversial series finale in 2010 — years after he tuned out of the show.
“I probably stopped watching the show halfway through season two,” Monaghan told The Post. “So by the time we got through another four seasons, I was just so far away from that and having left three years earlier and started to do other stuff, I don’t think I was fully invested in what was going on. I was aware that people were watching the finale and then it was the finale and that was a big deal.”
But Monaghan doesn’t believe the criticism of the show’s final episode should affect its legacy.
“My feeling with those type of things, it’s the same with ‘Sopranos’ or ‘West Wing’ or ‘Oz’ or ‘Game of Thrones’ or any of those shows — did you have a great time watching the show?” he asked. “Just because that last episode is not exactly how you would have wanted it to go, there are probably millions of people out there where it was exactly what they wanted. But because it wasn’t unanimous, people kind of kicked up.”
“I always feel like, did you like season one, two, three, four or five and almost every other episode until the finale? ‘Yeah, I loved it.’ Well, then you love the show,” Monaghan argued.
“You can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater just because the finale wasn’t something that you wanted,” he added.
Monaghan’s latest project is his new Western movie, “Long Shadows.” The film is set in the fading days of the Wild, Wild West and follows a lone drifter (Blaine Maye) seeking to avenge the brutal murder of his parents.
“I’ll travel anywhere,” Monaghan told The Post about shooting the movie in Arizona. “I think I’m kind of known for that. My agent said that I’m one of the few clients that he has that when an offer comes through from the jungle or from the desert or from the ocean, he thinks, ‘Well, you know, I know that Dom is not going to turn it down based on the location.’ I enjoy that.”
“Long Shadows” is in theaters now.
English (US)