It’s been 12 years since LOST aired its final episode, and star Matthew Fox hasn’t acted in a film or TV series for nearly seven years. He is, however, making a return to acting this year for Peacock’s apocalyptic thriller Last Light, a new series premiering later this year.
Last Light is based on the best-selling novel that imagines a world where society is falling apart, after oil supplies begin to dry up. Fox is playing Andy Neilson, an ex-pat living in London, who also happens to be one of the world’s leading petro-chemical engineers. His “drive and ambition sometimes have been to the detriment of his family life” (according to the official show description). Downton Abbey’s Joanne Froggatt (with Fox in the picture above) plays his wife Elena Neilson, who gave up her thriving career to focus on finding a cure for their son, Sam, who has a progressive, degenerative eye disease. Last Light is set to premiere September 8 on Peacock in the US. No video has been released from the series, but a single image of Fox (below) has.
While promoting the series at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival, Fox talked with Variety about his decision to quit acting after his last role in Bone Tomahawk in 2015. He said he decided to walk away because he had accomplished all he wanted in his career. “I kind of had a bucket list in my mind of things that I wanted to accomplish in the business,” he said. “And after I did Bone Tomahawk in 2014 that had kind of completed the bucket list. I wanted to do a Western. It’s a very odd Western, but it’s a Western. And so that sort of completed the bucket list.”
Fox also cited personal reasons for stepping away, including wanting to spend more time with wife Margherita Ronchi and their two children. “At that time in my life, our kids were at an age where I felt like I needed to really reengage,” Fox said. “I had been focused on work for some time, and Margherita had been running the family so beautifully, but I felt like it was time to be home, and I really felt like I was retiring from the business, and working on other creative elements that are really personal to me — some music and writing.”
Prior to his retirement, Fox had some personal issues that went public, including an alleged altercation with a bus driver in 2012. He denied it happened, and the bus driver sued, then withdrew the lawsuit without a settlement. Last Light helped lure him back to Hollywood with the chance to executive produce, which led to him eventually joining the cast. “I’d never done that before,” he said of executive producing. “The opportunity to be involved in ‘Last Light’ came along, and so I wanted to give it a shot. And it felt like the right time.”
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