Maggie Grace Reflects On Leaving “Lost”: It Was “The Worst Heartbreak Of My Career”
Maggie Grace, now 40, still fondly remembers the role that launched her career: Shannon Rutherford on Lost. Though she was on the show for less than two seasons, her time as Shannon left a lasting impression. At just 20 years old, Maggie quickly found fame and navigated the sudden spotlight.
“I feel for the cast of things like Twilight where they are suddenly thrust into the spotlight when you feel very ill-prepared,” Maggie shared in an interview with The Independent.
“It’s a lot at that age, but I think being the baby of the cast helped,” she added.
Filming Lost in a “tiny village” in Hawaii provided a unique experience for Maggie, as she said it shielded her from the intense Hollywood spotlight and created a close-knit environment. She fondly described the cast and crew as “this little theater troupe.”
Maggie noted, “It was just before social media, which was an enormous blessing for everyone’s mental health. And the concept of the show being popular was just this vague, fuzzy, sort of ‘Oh, that’s nice.’”
Maggie grew comfortable playing Shannon, making it even harder when she found out her character would be killed off six episodes into season two in 2005. “I thought they were gonna take her a little further. It’s still the worst heartbreak of my career. I was devastated,” she explained.
She speculated that her character was removed because Shannon was seen as “a caricature of white privilege,” and the plot no longer needed that element.
She joked, “Maybe I was just too good at my assigned job of being incredibly annoying.”
Maggie believed there was more potential for Shannon’s character development. “I thought maybe she would do something surprising, or have another color to her personality. Maybe she’d, at the last moment, redeem herself and be incredibly self-sacrificial in some way. I guess there were flashes of it, but not in the way I hoped in terms of an arc.”
“That’s a selfish actor’s point of view. They definitely had bigger fish to fry,” she said further.
Since her departure from Lost, Maggie has starred in the Taken trilogy, played Irina in the Twilight Saga, and appeared in the series Fear the Walking Dead. She has also embraced motherhood with her husband, Brent Bushnell.
