First Shot: Lost, found and BUSTED!

That Elizabeth Mitchell sure is sitting in the catbird seat these days. First, she gets to lob the latest game-changing, season-ending curveball on Lost. Then she scores the lead in one of the most successful new TV series of the fall season, V. And now comes word that she’s been cast in an indie ensemble film produced by the same company that brought us The Squid and the Whale.

But did you know that, in addition to all of these prodigious accomplishments, Mitchell is also a proud supporter of the Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival?

OK, that’s only true if you believe in J.J. Abrams-style paradoxes that allow folks to commune with their best buds at all points along the space-time continuum. But if you do, you’ll find it easy to swallow the idea that Mitchell, back when she was still just a sprout of an undergrad, was able to see into the future and know that the Orlando Fringe would one day be run by her BFF, Beth Marshall. And that she would approve.

You see, Marshall and Mitchell were once mutual drama queens at Stephens College in Columbia, MO, all the way back in the tender year of nineteen-coughs-and-changes-the-subject. And we’ve got the yellowing, furtively scanned pics to prove it!

Here we see a carefree, barely-legal Mitchell limbo-ing to her heart’s content at a summer-stock luau, subconsciously and eerily anticipating Lost’s Hawaii shoot a few decades in advance.

We also glimpse her backstage at a production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, waiting to take the stage alongside castmate Marshall (the one blowing the raspberry, to absolutely no one’s surprise).

And we’ve even thrown in a shot of Mitchell with two other friends (who are unimportant to our purposes and thus shall remain nameless), just because it’s a nice portrait that proves her identity beyond a shadow of a doubt --  in case some Cynical Sam thinks we’re faking this whole thing for some bizarre reason that only Benjamin Linus could comprehend.

And how does Marshall recall the young Mitchell?

“Giving, adorable, caring, talented, thoughtful. NOT at all a wild girl; not at all ego-driven. We must have acted in about seven shows together, ranging from ... Read Moremusicals to children's theatre and dramas, and I directed her in two. My best memory of her is when we would be out in public and do this thing we called ‘Freaky Friday’ and decide to act like each other in public. It was hilarious.”

Awww, isn’t that cute? Now, excuse me … where’s the dirt??!! Where’s the, “She was a bitch who stole the only boy I ever loved, and her continued success is clear-cut proof that fate is a cruel and arbitrary whoremistress?” HEY, DON’T YOU KNOW WHAT KIND OF A WEBSITE THIS IS?

Coming next week: Brian Feldman’s bitter childhood rivalry with Hugh Laurie, just to right the balance.

Posted by Steve Schneider on 11/6/2009 3:17:03 PM Permalink | Comments: 0

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