That Time I Hid From William Hurt on the Set of ‘Lost in Space’ – and How He Got All ‘Wiggy’
15.03.2022 - 06:29
/ thewrap.com
now-deceased Entertainment Weekly, a ridiculously sweet gig that had me jetting all over the world and popping in on movie productions to interview their casts and crews. But when I arrived at the soundstage outside London, in Shepperton Studios, where “Lost in Space” was filming, I could tell right away this was going to be no ordinary set visit.
For one thing, it was a colossal affair, spreading over 11 soundstages filled with giant flying saucers, huge animatronic robots (controlled by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop) and bizarre alien worlds teeming with the sort of weird botanical lifeforms you’d normally find crawling around the refrigerator’s crisper bin after a two-week vacation.New Line was betting the house on the film — $80 million, real money at the time, and the most the now-defunct studio had ever spent on a movie before. Hurt was rumored to have been paid a bundle to star as Professor John Robinson, the space-faring family man who takes the wife and kids for a spin through the cosmos, gets lost, and — typical dad — refuses to ask for directions.
Some of his castmates couldn’t have come cheap, either, like Matt LeBlanc, then one of the biggest TV stars on Earth, who played swashbuckling pilot Don West, and Gary Oldman, then on a winning streak playing whacked-out bad guys, as the deliciously sinister Dr. Smith. But what really caught my attention wasn’t the huge amount of cash sloshing around the sets — I’d seen that before.
What was different was the glint of fear and anxiety in everybody’s eyes, especially when they found out I was planning on interviewing Hurt. One actor, whom I knew a bit from other movie set visits, discreetly sidled up to me at one point and whispered in my ear, “Watch out for William,”
.