‘Last Light’ Stars Matthew Fox and Joanne Froggatt Talk Sand Storms and ‘Smashing Stuff’ in New Peacock Thriller (Exclusive)

Peacock just premiered a brand new limited thriller series, Last Light, which stars Lost alum Matthew Fox and Downton Abbey. The series is based on Alex Scarrow’s best-selling novel of the same name and, follows petro-chemist Andy Yeats (Fox) as he tries to get back to his wife, Elena (Froggatt), and their young son during a near-apocalyptic oil-shortage event. Ahead of the series debut, PopCulture.com had a chance to speak with Fox and Froggatt about their experience filming Last Light, and they shared that production was filled with makeshift sand storms and “smashing stuff” more than they anticipated.

In the first episode of Last Light, Fox’s character is on the run from some nefarious gentleman in a middle eastern desert and gets caught up in a major sandstorm. When we pointed out that he can’t seem to escape the sand, referring to his time on the island paradise (purgatory?) while filming , the actor laughed and replied, “I hadn’t even thought about that. That’s absolutely true. Always a little bit of sand in my work.” He went on to explain that series director Dennie Gordon created the sandstorm from scratch and “just blasted it with high-speed fans.” He added, “That was pretty rough. I mean, honestly, after each take, I had to be doused with water and flush my eyes. It was pretty gnarly.”

Praising his sandblasting director, Fox said, “Dennie, she’s amazing. Amazing director, and the action stuff was so much more difficult than I thought it was going to be, because she’s amazing and she wants to shoot stuff in a lot of different ways and she wants stuff to have a certain, you know be kinetic. So she doesn’t rest until it’s right, and it was an amazing experience working with her again.”

When it comes to the action scenes the pair filmed, Froggatt confessed that they may not have realized just how much they were in for. “Me and Matthew both did exactly the same thing, and this is not Dennie’s fault, I think we can both take personal responsibility for this, we should know better,” she said. “But we kind of read the scripts and each, I mean, Matthew had more action stuff to do with me, but I kind of went, ‘Oh yeah, she’s running down there, she’s going to smash that, blah, blah, blah. Great.’ And then you get on set and you’re like, ‘Oh yeah, I forgot.’”

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She continued, “It’s a little bit more involved than you first think, and I’d chosen these really inappropriate boots that have got too high a heel and I’m running around these things and smashing stuff and jumping over stuff, and I kind of was like, “Yeah, I didn’t…” When you read it on the page, it’s not quite as in real life, so that’s a note to self for [the] future. But I loved it, I mean, I loved doing all the action stuff. I mean, for me, it’s like being a kid in a sweet shop, it’s so much fun.”

Froggatt then also went on to also herald Gordon, their fearless leader, saying, “Dennie, she’s so experienced at shooting that stuff and she’s so brilliant at it, and she has high standards, and people, we all want to do our best for her. She’s like, ‘Nope, it’s not right. Yes, it’s right,’ and you know when you’ve got a good take when you hear her react and you’re like, ‘Yes, we got it.’ It’s just she has a very contagious sort of enthusiasm.” All episodes of Last Light are now streaming on Peacock.