Sonya Walger and Henry Ian Cusick created a love so magical that they’re responsible for what’s widely regarded as the greatest TV episode of all time – not to mention inspiring a fan to get a full leg tattoo of their faces
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Lost is one of television’s most romantic dramas. Forget smoke monsters, time travel and that infamous ending – this was a show fuelled by swoony stories. Sun and Jin; Rose and Bernard; Sawyer/Jack/Kate/Juliet; Charlie and Claire; Sayid and Nadia (not Shannon). Love was the reason behind so many of the islanders’ need to survive, or to sacrifice themselves.
But it was Penny’s and Desmond’s relationship that defined the series.
Penelope Widmore (Sonya Walger), a billionaire’s daughter, met Desmond Hume (Henry Ian Cusick), an ordinary Scot, when she went to pick up wine from a monastery, where Des had just quit being a monk. It was love at first sight and they drove off together with the booze. But the relationship was doomed due to Penny’s disapproving (and evil) father, Des’s need to prove himself in a sailing competition and his arrival at a freaky island. Like the Odyssey character after whom she was named, Penny spent a lot of time waiting and wondering. However, as she once forewarned: “With enough money and determination, you can find anyone.” And she did. In fact, without Penny, the survivors of Oceanic flight 815 might never have made it home.
Of course, it wasn’t easy. There was a breakup, Charlie’s devastating death and the sob-fest episode The Constant – widely considered the best TV episode of all time – in which, after eight years apart, Penny kept her promise to answer Des’s phone call on Christmas Eve. As Penny put it: “All you really need to survive is someone who loves you. And you have her.”
How did Walger and Cusick make such a love story for the ages? On the day I put this to them, it is exactly 21 years since the Lost pilot. “It’s the day the plane went down … and I’m flying to LA in two hours!” says Cusick from his home in Hawaii, the filming location of Lost, where he moved his family 20 years ago. “Are you really?” gasps Walger from Santa Monica, California. “It will make the news,” he laughs.
The friends quickly exchange life updates: Cusick is filming an indie vampire western; Walger is navigating a new normal after losing her family home in the Los Angeles fires. Then, it’s time to talk about becoming Penny and Desmond …
HC: The writers had an idea for something, but they didn’t know what. When I shot the photo [of Penny and Des, which Des keeps with him on the island], another actor played that – and she was a local extra. Then we did it again with Sonya.
SW: Let’s be clear: there was no time for a chemistry read. There was no time for anything, ever. I mean, they were writing these scripts and shooting them 15 minutes later. People were being cast and put on a plane that afternoon.
HC: It was night-time! [Their first scene together is at night in a stadium.]
SW: I’d been there on my own, jumping up and down around the stadium and feeling quite adrift – I didn’t know anyone. I was really sticky and thought: I need to meet this guy I don’t know anything about. We immediately discovered that Ian is half Scottish and half Peruvian and I’m half English and half Argentine. And those are strangely exotic and yet neighboured identities. That was something very lovely, very rare.
HC: I have a big memory of meeting Sonya and thinking: oh, a proper, proper actress. But then she would pop in and out all the time.
SW: I’d be gone for months. Funnily enough, Ian was my constant. I didn’t know anyone else in the show and I really wasn’t getting the intervening scripts. So we’d sit down and I’d be like: “All right, what’s happened?”
SW: When you’ve got a father as domineering as Charles Widmore [Alan Dale], the quiet, gentle devotion of Desmond is the antithesis of that.