Elizabeth Mitchell

Photograph: Bob D'Amico/ABC

Do you believe in aliens?
I believe there’s definitely a possibility of life. We watch the Discovery Channel a lot because I have a four-year-old. So those kind of programs about “We shot the telescope into the darkest part of space and we found this!” are very intriguing to me.

The humans in V are very, uh, receptive to the aliens.
[Laughs] Yeah, I thought that was a very interesting choice. But my character isn’t. I think that there are times that we act contrary to our skeptical nature. I don’t think that we really know what it would be like if every single major city had a football-field-size spaceship above it. I mean, the reaction might be to try to shoot them out of the sky.

That sounds more like us.
Doesn’t it? And they kinda try. And there’s something about this woman, the alien leader—she has a hypnotic quality among humans. And, it seems, with her own people. The great thing about when you get into the realm of what-if is that it can be whatever the person imagining it decides it is.

Did you see the original ’80s miniseries of V?
I liked it. I do really love sci-fi—mainly books—and I’m really captivated by adventure stories. These people were actively trying to save humanity; that gets your heart going.

How good are you at keeping secrets, like from Lost?
I’m pretty good at it. I very rarely mess up. But I’m a Christmas-morning person: I never looked in the closet where the presents were.

Do you ever lie, just for fun?
I’m not a very good liar.

As an actress, you can’t lie?
Yeah, it’s funny, I’m terrible. My heart starts to beat faster, my face starts to go red. I think the reason I can get away with it in acting is I believe it. If I don’t believe it, I honestly can’t do it. So, no, I don’t tell lies.

So then what’s happening in the last season of Lost?
I do know how much I’m going to be involved, but I can’t say because it’s part of the surprise! I think a lot of people will be back. I think it’s gonna kind of be old-home week on Lost. That will be nice! There are were so many characters that are gone that people loved.

And it’s in Hawaii—can’t be hard to lure people back.
Yes, and Lost did great things for all of these actors, created careers. So I think coming back is not a hardship.

In the inevitable alien invasion, are you a join-the-resistance person or a let-me-know-when-it’s-over person?
I would probably not be a let-me-know person, because I’m a mother. There are so many people throughout history that are strong and even somewhat vicious because they have children. That’s what I think this character, Erica [in V], is: strong because she has a child. … I found out about playing strong women, a bit, when playing Juliet on Lost, though that was a really unique case. I’d compare Erica to Athena and Hera, because she’s both the mother and the warrior. Back in popular fiction, she’s like Sarah Connor in The Terminator a lot. And of course you’ve gotta have a little Ripley in there.

What could aliens do to win you over? Not start a resistance?
Definitely cure disease. And make us more peaceful, of course, You don’t want your child to walk into an adversarial world. But definitely disease—I’ve lost way too many people to cancer. Can you imagine if it’s just gone? Ah, heaven.

It would do a lot toward welcoming our new alien overlords.
[Laughs] It would!

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