Sonya Walger and Henry Ian Cusick created a love so magical that they\u2019re responsible for what\u2019s widely regarded as the greatest TV episode of all time \u2013 not to mention inspiring a fan to get a full leg tattoo of their faces<\/p>\n
More from our series Making Love: \u2018We met and two minutes later we were kissing\u2019 \u2013 how Gavin and Stacey became Britain\u2019s most bang tidy TV couple<\/p>\n
Lost is one of television\u2019s most romantic dramas. Forget smoke monsters, time travel and that infamous ending \u2013 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\u2019 need to survive, or to sacrifice themselves.<\/p>\n
But it was Penny\u2019s and Desmond\u2019s relationship that defined the series.<\/p>\n
Penelope Widmore (Sonya Walger), a billionaire\u2019s 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\u2019s disapproving (and evil) father, Des\u2019s 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: \u201cWith enough money and determination, you can find anyone.\u201d And she did. In fact, without Penny, the survivors of Oceanic flight 815 might never have made it home.<\/p>\n
Of course, it wasn\u2019t easy. There was a breakup, Charlie\u2019s devastating death and the sob-fest episode The Constant \u2013 widely considered the best TV episode of all time \u2013 in which, after eight years apart, Penny kept her promise to answer Des\u2019s phone call on Christmas Eve. As Penny put it: \u201cAll you really need to survive is someone who loves you. And you have her.\u201d<\/p>\n
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. \u201cIt\u2019s the day the plane went down \u2026 and I\u2019m flying to LA in two hours!\u201d says Cusick from his home in Hawaii, the filming location of Lost, where he moved his family 20 years ago. \u201cAre you really?\u201d gasps Walger from Santa Monica, California. \u201cIt will make the news,\u201d he laughs.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s time to talk about becoming Penny and Desmond \u2026<\/p>\n
HC: The writers had an idea for something, but they didn\u2019t know what. When I shot the photo [of Penny and Des, which Des keeps with him on the island], another actor played that \u2013 and she was a local extra. Then we did it again with Sonya.<\/p>\n
SW: Let\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
HC: It was night-time! [Their first scene together is at night in a stadium.]<\/p>\n
SW: I\u2019d been there on my own, jumping up and down around the stadium and feeling quite adrift \u2013 I didn\u2019t know anyone. I was really sticky and thought: I need to meet this guy I don\u2019t know anything about. We immediately discovered that Ian is half Scottish and half Peruvian and I\u2019m half English and half Argentine. And those are strangely exotic and yet neighboured identities. That was something very lovely, very rare.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
SW: I\u2019d be gone for months. Funnily enough, Ian was my constant. I didn\u2019t know anyone else in the show and I really wasn\u2019t getting the intervening scripts. So we\u2019d sit down and I\u2019d be like: \u201cAll right, what\u2019s happened?\u201d<\/p>\n
SW: When you\u2019ve got a father as domineering as Charles Widmore [Alan Dale], the quiet, gentle devotion of Desmond is the antithesis of that.<\/p>\n