Elizabeth Mitchell dishes all about 'V' -- and the 'Lost' romance she doubted at first

The aliens are coming (at 8 p.m. Tuesday night, to be specific), and it’s up to Elizabeth Mitchell to stop them.  As FBI agent Erica Evans in ABC’s new drama V—a reboot of that 1983 aliens-among-us miniseries—she’ll need to use every weapon at her disposal to defend the human race. (Of course, she does have a little experience with hydrogen bombs. Click here for some SPOILER ALERT-worthy quotes from Lost exec producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof about the fate of Juliet—as well as Mitchell’s take on that gut-wrenching season 5 finale.) Before the invasion begins, be sure to check out the latest issue of EW to learn more about the geek goddess. What’s that? You want even more Mitchell right now? Scroll down for bonus intel from Mitchell about all things V, the unlikely Juliet-Sawyer romance on Lost, and Comic-Con madness. Then she will entertain you in video form at the bottom of the page.

On signing on to V:

“I heard there was a science-fiction pilot with a really strong female protagonist. There was also a strong antagonist.  I didn’t want to be the antagonist again—I’d done that.  The antagonist in V is very similar to my Juliet in that you don’t know what she’s thinking, and I would like to play a character that you do know what she’s thinking.… I love adventures with strong female protagonists, that’s all I read.  So it was kind of a childhood fantasy to be able to do this.  And the fact that they wanted me to do it was hilarious. And then the fact that it was ABC and that [I could shoot the pilot] while I was still filming Lost was even more bizarre.”

On the differences between Juliet and Erica:

“Juliet was sneaky, which was lovely. And lethal. Mainly because she didn’t have any barriers in her mind that kept her from violence. But I think Erica has all those barriers in place—she just happens to be very strong.  So if it’s imperative, or if it has something to do with the greater good of her child, she’s able to use that, which I love.”

On what to expect from Erica:

“In the first two episodes, I demolish things with other objects—a baseball bat, a crowbar, and there is one other at the beginning of the second episode which I’ll keep as a surprise. I kind of like it because she’s fairly scrappy—which is a terrible word because I never liked Scrappy-Doo. I preferred Scooby. What I’m trying to say is she’s really resourceful.… It’s been fun, it’s been freeing. It is a character that you do know what she’s thinking.  She’s just a woman whose husband left her and who is working so hard to make sure the bad guys don’t win.  I’m sure I’ll make her messier. By the time I’m done with her, she’ll be massively complicated.  But she’s starting out as a lovely protagonist.”

On where V’s story is headed:

“Our resourceful resistance has banded together for better or for worse—some of us hate each other, some of us like each other— and we have found a massive threat against the human population. For the rest of the four episodes, we spend that time striking as many blows as we can against Anna [the leader of the Visitors, played by Morena Baccarin] and her group. It’s almost like Star Wars—against the Empire.”

On the changes that V has undergone (the series shut down production for nearly five weeks in the fall to “maximize creative opportunities”):

“We needed to up the urgency. You’re trying to reel people in slowly, but the problem with today’s audience is that they don’t do slow very well.… I’m really happy with the changes. I think it’s going to be fun. I’ve never really seen a show get this much attention and money thrown into it. I guess it happens all the time—I’ve just never seen it happen. So what that says to me is that they think they’ve got something here, and they just don’t want to mess it up.”

On Lost’s Sawyer-Juliet romance:

“That should not have worked! It’s crazy how good [Damon and Carlton] are. They can make anything they want to work, and they decided it would work. And it did.”

“In life, Josh and I play guitar and sing together and have a lovely time.  There isn’t any chemistry between us personally, which we talked about.  Nothing!  But what we didn’t realize is essentially we are so similar and our moral code is so similar.  We both absolutely will catch you if you fall.  So when we started getting into it—it gives me chills just to think about—he caught me every time I jumped and I caught him when he jumped, and that made for something really interesting. So now he’s one of my favorites.  It makes me happy to know that I’m going to be on camera with him. But it certainly didn’t start out that way. It started with me going, ‘Ugh. What a benign pairing that is! I mean, we’re both blond for God’s sake!’”

“I don’t think we realized we were really onto something until the scene in the kitchen [where Sawyer brings Juliet a flower].  And what you didn’t see on camera—we shot it but it didn’t air—was that he picked me up and carried me over to the sink and just started kissing me. We finished that and we both looked at each other. On-camera, the chemistry was there, and off-camera, it was us again.”

On that fervent fan reception at Comic-Con in July:

“I did feel for maybe a flash of a second when I had eight security guys around me that I was a little bit famous.  But it was more of a tickle than anything else.… What was really nice about it was people were so intelligent and concise in their thoughts. And they were so completely devastated that Juliet was gone, or thought to be gone.  One guy was in tears talking about it. It was really nice to be that person for people when I had other people be that person for me.”

On her looks:

“I am very benign-looking.  I’m somewhat like a golden retriever: It’s not hard to look at me. I’m perfectly fine. It’s not like things jut out and make you nervous. But the lovely thing about being so pale and having such pasty features is that I can look like pretty much anything, which is nice.”

Carlton Cuse on Mitchell:

“She is this very beautiful, very engaging actor, but she thinks of herself as being a bit of a geek. So there’s a quality of unawareness of her own beauty. And her own ability to underestimate herself in a way makes her more appealing.”

Damon Lindelof on Mitchell:

“The thing that Elizabeth does, and continued to do over the course of the show, is listen. She is one of the best listeners. You could cut to Elizabeth almost any time someone else is talking and watch her listening to them, and you could just see the wheels turning. You never really knew what was going on in Juliet’s head. The fact that she was conveying that something was going on but she didn’t want you to know what it was was endlessly fascinating.”

V exec producer Scott Peters on discovering that Mitchell would be available to star in his show:

“We kind of held our breath and went, ‘You’re not just messing us, right? This could happen?’ I can point to the place in Vancouver where I pulled over in the pouring rain to talk to Elizabeth for the first time, because it was such a great moment for us to know that we had found our Erica… She is absolutely the complete package. She’s able to be kicking ass and taking names in one scene and you get to see a little small private moment with her where you realize she’s a human being. She’s somebody who has a child and a marriage that fell apart and is dimensionalized that way. And it really sends chills down my spine when I see her do her thing.”

PHOTO CREDIT: David Grey/ABC