‘Lost in Space’ Actors Pick Favorite Near-Death Scene - Netflix Tudum

  • Interview

    ‘Lost in Space’ Stars Pick Their Favorite Near-Death Scene

    As it turns out, space was the least of their worries.

    By Marisa Roffman
    Dec. 18, 2021

Over the course of three seasons, the Lost in Space crew save humanity, visit different planets, make new friends... and almost die approximately a dozen times a year. (It’s not easy being heroes.) But somehow — spoiler alert — they manage to survive their journey intact. Ahead, the actors share their favorite close-call moments from the series.

‘Lost in Space’ Stars Pick Their Favorite Near-Death Scene

Maxwell Jenkins (Will Robinson)

Maxwell Jenkins (Will Robinson): “The first time Will gets stabbed [in Season 3, Episode 6] was probably my favorite. Not only story wise — because I really like the lead-up to it and what follows — but filming it was such a fun, hard, challenging, incredible process. We spent a day and a half on just that scene alone. And we used everything; we got every kind of footage we possibly could. We brought out a special camera that shot like 7,000 frames per second in super slow-mo. We did some crazy camera angles, where we had the camera operator fall with me when I go down. We used every possible crane. And, also, the creative team on that scene was just incredible. It’s an emotional, hard scene to film. We all worked really hard to film that one.”

‘Lost in Space’ Stars Pick Their Favorite Near-Death Scene

Molly Parker (Maureen Robinson)

Molly Parker (Maureen Robinson): “It somehow never occurred to me until we actually began [filming] Season 1 that these people are almost dying all the time. [Maureen] is in a state of panic constantly and needing to come up with a solution. The thing about that is that I know that that’s not really happening, but my body doesn’t know [it’s just acting]. So when I get to the end of shooting each season, I am exhausted. There’s just a level of adrenal fatigue that happens after the show. But I have to say, I think my favorite scene of all the times we almost died [was] when John and Maureen are stuck in the tar pit in the Chariot [in Season 1, Episode 7]. [Only] one of us is going to get out and we have this scene — it’s kind of a coming back together of these people... it was just such a tender scene. For me, [I] was like, ‘Okay, I want this show at that level. I want us to be working at that kind of level.’ I love that. Toby Stephens is just such a terrific actor and has become such a dear friend; I like what we were able to do there.” 

Toby Stephens (John Robinson): “My favorite near-death experience was when Maureen and [John] are stuck in the tar pit in the Chariot. It’s a wonderful sequence, because they haven’t — in the first season — been close at all. The marriage is not working and it’s falling apart. They are thrown into this situation where all of the illusions are out of the window, because they’re about to die. So there’s this sort of truthfulness about them, and then they come together. The audience has been wanting it, really, and [Maureen and John have] been wanting it. It catalyzes this scene where they’re together, finally. But then they know that one is going to have to die.”  

‘Lost in Space’ Stars Pick Their Favorite Near-Death Scene

Mina Sundwall (Penny Robinson)

Mina Sundwall (Penny Robinson): “I loved the stuff in the water with Ignacio [Serricchio, who plays] Don West [in Season 3, Episode 1]. That was not only really fun to film, but the first time I’d ever done a stunt like that and acted in an environment that was equally as complicated and overwhelming as what the character was going through. We did a lot of green screen and there were lots of stunts, but that one really took a different toll on the scene. [And] in Season 3, I don’t know if it’s necessarily defying death, but all the rock-climbing stuff was kind of very dangerous in their world, and that was a lot of fun to do.” 

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