Development
In February 2005, Lost producers began looking for a Latina woman in her mid-thirties who would be the leader of the tail section, and a romantic interest for Jack. Michelle Rodriguez's agent called the producers, informing them Rodriguez was interested in the role, but only for a year. Rodriguez, producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, and Lost creator J. J. Abrams met, and Rodriguez explained she would only be interested in one season because she was a "nomadic spirit", but would like to do one wicked arc. The producers liked her energy, so agreed, with the plan to kill Ana Lucia at the end of the season. Rodriguez felt she had been typecast in tough female roles, so wanted this role to be different. Ana Lucia was planned to start as a tough character, because that is what the audience would expect, then the layers of the character would be gradually peeled back. Rodriguez described Ana Lucia as an "animalistic type creature... tamed by the Island." They reconstructed the character slightly to fit what they liked about Rodriguez, such as making her more "street smart" with a "speak-her-mind quality." Ana Lucia made her first appearance in the penultimate episode of season one, in order to set up her character becoming part of the cast in the next season. All Rodriguez was told about her character was both she and her mother were in the police force. Ana Lucia's style of leadership deliberately contrasts Jack's; Jack is a reluctant leader, whereas Ana Lucia quickly takes charge on her own. In her early appearances, Ana Lucia is shown to be very tough, so the flashbacks in "Collision", where it is revealed she lost her baby, were used to show a softer side to her.
The producers found Ana Lucia to be an unsympathetic character, so Libby was killed at the same time to create an emotional impact. The producers also denied she was killed off because of Rodriguez's behaviour on set, saying although they had no interaction with her, they had been told she had been professional. Rodriguez felt comfortable on the series, but was happy to leave as she felt this would help her grow personally, and become a woman. She had mixed feelings about leaving Hawaii, where Lost is filmed; her allergies were hard to deal with, but she loved the scenery.
Read more about this topic: Ana Lucia Cortez
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“They [women] can use their abilities to support each other, even as they develop more effective and appropriate ways of dealing with power.... Women do not need to diminish other women ... [they] need the power to advance their own development, but they do not “need” the power to limit the development of others.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)
“If you complain of people being shot down in the streets, of the absence of communication or social responsibility, of the rise of everyday violence which people have become accustomed to, and the dehumanization of feelings, then the ultimate development on an organized social level is the concentration camp.... The concentration camp is the final expression of human separateness and its ultimate consequence. It is organized abandonment.”
—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)
“The man, or the boy, in his development is psychologically deterred from incorporating serving characteristics by an easily observable fact: there are already people around who are clearly meant to serve and they are girls and women. To perform the activities these people are doing is to risk being, and being thought of, and thinking of oneself, as a woman. This has been made a terrifying prospect and has been made to constitute a major threat to masculine identity.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)