CusickGallery.net: Henry Ian Cusick

Thanks so much to Stephanie for sharing her close encounter and giving the okey dokey to post it here!!

This is part of Stephanie’s recent trip to Hawaii.  It’s a thrill to just read about it!!

See below for link to a video taken by another fan who was there.

Monday, February 22, 2010

The Second Best Day Of My Life

We headed back up to the North Shore again the next day, we just had to. Both of us utterly fell in love with it and were on board with driving the hour one way it took from where we were staying in Waikiki to spend the day there again. Plus it’s us, we caught wind of filming being done up there and weren’t going to waste an opportunity to see some.

This time we were smart and parked at Papailoa instead of the five hundred mile trek from the other beach. Nothing was going on that we could see, no white trucks or vans or what appeared to be any filming, but that was okay. We were still very happy to be by the beach camp, and to just be on that particular beach period.

So we sat in some shade and just hung out. It was one of those great times where you can sit with someone in contented silence and it’s okay, no need to fill the air with meaningless chit chat, both of enjoying the view of the ocean and the waves rolling in. Again there were a bunch of sea turtles sunning themselves, and a huge bonus, a humpback whale breaching the distance. I pulled out my binoculars and watched it flap its fine and show off its tail, very cool to sit on an incredible beach in Hawaii and watch a whale breaching.

We met a bunch of people that we’d end up seeing throughout our trip, including the family of three we saw at Banditos (the day we got to watch the filming on the monitors), Ana, her brother Stephen and their mother Pat and they showed up. By then we knew that there was filming going on, but not at the beach camp, it was inland a bit, but not by much. We saw the trucks going by, could see the cast trailers in the woods, but no cast unfortunately.

One couple that we met were from Spain, very nice people and very enjoyable to talk to. He was a bit more of a Lost fanatic than she was and we spent a good amount of time talking about the show, the beach, Lost and things like that. Eventually they moved down the beach a bit, towards Eko’s church, while we hung out with the others. Paul decided to go back to the car for some food and more water while I stayed behind and I eventually wandered down to where the Spanish couple was.

As soon as he saw me he got very excited and came over in a full lather. He started saying to me, “You’re not going to believe it, it’s huge, it’s very huge, you won’t believe it!” Over and over, until I was just like “Tell me!” and his wife gave him a swat telling him to spit it out. Turned out that they were sitting there minding their own business when a woman came over and started chatting with them. She asked them if they watched Lost and if they were fans of the show; they said yes, that they flew in from Spain and extended their stay to go to the premier. She went on to say that her husband worked on the show and they figured it was some lacky, but no, she said it was none other than John Locke, and that she’d go see if he could come out and say hi on his break, which was coming up in a few minutes.

Well. You can imagine what kind of reaction that got out of me. Even writing it now is getting me all worked up as I remember it. When I looked down the beach I saw that Paul was coming back and was waving him over. I could tell he was hot and tired and only wanted to eat and wasn’t in the mood to walk up to Eko’s church. I can certainly tell you that I wasn’t about to walk down there to get him and miss out on Terry! So I kept on waving him over and he finally came up the beach and I told him that Terry O’Quinn may be coming out.

Not much time passed before Terry did come out, maybe ten minutes later. I was so excited and that’s putting it mildly, I couldn’t believe that my favorite actor was coming over to say hi to us, that I was actually meeting him in person. Okay, I’ll admit it that I was so thrilled and worked up that I was literally shaking, I know, I know, lame. But I’ve never met a famous person like that before, much less the one that plays my absolute favorite character on my favorite TV show and my adrenaline was pumping.

He was very, very gracious with all of us, by now a crowd had formed (kind of a bummer, one second it was the four of us the next about a dozen people were there from seemingly out of nowhere). He made sure to talk to everyone though, asking questions such as where we were from. His wife was also there; she was the one to take most of the pictures for people when he posed with them, a huge smile on her face the whole time. These are mine:

Terry’s wife Lori using my camera to take a picture:

When Paul and I got our picture taken together with him, Paul told Terry he came down from CA, I said I came from Canada, but that I was with him. Terry kind of leaned down to me and said “Lucky guy” but of course Paul didn’t hear, not that he would since Terry is pretty low spoken. Anyway, all this means is that ‘lucky guy’ = Terry thinks I’m pretty. Good enough for me!

On top of the pictures, a bunch of us got his autograph. Paul had printed up a bunch of 8×10 color pictures of various Lost actors, but they were in his backpack, in a folder and though he tried to get them out as fast as he could, Terry had to get back to work. Unfortunately Paul didn’t get an autograph, but I did. I tore a piece of paper out of Ana’s journal she had with her and here it is:

Too bad he didn’t slip me his phone number, but oh well. I’m going to get it framed, along with the picture of him and I. Right now the autograph is in a safe place where I can’t spill water on it or anything terrible of that nature.

Once Terry was gone, we all sort of freaked out a bit from being so excited. Again I’ll have to admit to being a bit of a loser, maybe I sort of held my cool in front of O’Quinn, barely, minus the visible shaking that I know he and his wife saw when I handed my camera over, at least I was able to speak coherently to him. Afterwards there was some jumping around and light screaming I think, not just from me so I wasn’t the only tool in the group. Mostly we all just told each other story of how we just met Terry O’Quinn even though we were all right there witnessing it, and of course sharing pictures and email address to send each other pictures.

Eventually everyone calmed down and we settled back down in the shade. The day was beautiful and we continued watching sea turtles and whales, talking with the other Lost fans (basically bragging about meeting TOQ). Not sure how many hours passed, all day essentially, not that it mattered in such a location as that. A bunch of us compared stories and tips on filming, one of the guards was bored and talked to us to kill time.

Ana, Stephen and Pat were hanging out with us when suddenly some guy came over, asking if any of us had any water, that his friend had become overwhelmed by the heat and sun. We gave him some and she ended up being okay, apparently they (her and her boyfriend, plus this dude who asked us for water) had made the insane trek down the beach that we had done the day before, but with no water. Apparently they were told by that same surfer guy that the beach camp was just a little bit down the beach, someone really needs to tell that guy that he’s way off base with that.

Obviously all of us had one very important thing in common being Lost fans, and one thing I learned while in Hawaii that Lost fans can be very cool people indeed. Sure, some are know- it-all douches, but for the most part the other fans I met were very fun to hang out with. These three were there for a bachelorette and bachelor party, but wanted to see the beach camp and when they heard how we had met TOQ and that he was there filming, decided to stick around in the hopes of seeing him.

The last man I’ll mention was an English guy in Hawaii on his honeymoon, and as the afternoon wore on he was getting more and more antsy, since he had told his new bride he’d be back at a certain time and he kept on staying later and later. I found it amusing and figured if she had married the guy knew he was Lost fanatic, turns out he has a blog or something in the UK and goes to Hawaii on a semi-regular basis for spoilers, one of the guards told us there’s a picture of him up in the production office as one of the ‘people to look out for’. We had met him the day before and he drew a very inaccurate map in my journal, not even sure now what the map was for now actually. Possibly a Starbucks, but I really can’t remember.

All in all a good day…

That was about to get even better. Soon we noticed some action going on by a snack table that was visible through the foliage. Turned out to be Terry O’Quinn on a break, so we all rubber necked and took pictures. Mine were pretty fuzzy and not overly impressive.

All of us were standing around in a group, about ten of us I’d say and though we didn’t see any actual filming, we could hear it. Gunshots, the director yelling “cut!” and things like that. Filming was about done for the day, it was around five thirty or so at this point, and low and behold, who was coming over to say hi again? You guessed it, Terry O’Quinn, but this time he was dragging Henry Ian Cusick (Desmond) to come greet us too.

Oh joy, not only did I get to meet Terry once, but twice! In one day! And now Desmond! Who is totally hotter than I originally thought. Again, Terry was great with us fans, making small talk, joking around. Poor Paul’s camera was acting up so he couldn’t take any pictures, but mine was working fine. I let others that weren’t there earlier in the day get their picture taken, especially these four that were supposed to be elsewhere but had kept on hanging out hoping to see Terry O’Quinn.

The English guy, he was telling them about his new bride waiting for him and they were laughing about it.

The group of three that were two hours late meeting friends on the other side of the island an hour away. I’m sure it was totally worth it for them:

I could tell that they (the actors) had to go soon from the way they kept on looking over their shoulders, so I hopped over to get my picture taken with both of them. Ahhh….the perfect sandwich with me as the filling:

They were both hot and sweaty, they both still had their makeup on and Cusick looked like he came out of the wrong side of a fight. It’ll be cool to see what scene that was being filmed when the episode airs. They took a few pictures with a kid that could have been an extra on the show, he was dressed as an Other:

Then they had to leave…here’s a nice butt shot for you Desmond fans.

I’m happy to report that there was no lameness on my part the second time around, just me being very happy.

What a thrill for Paul and I to not only meet our favorite actor on the show once, but twice in the same day. Let’s just say we went back to our hotel and celebrated with a good old fashioned drink on.

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JWUmatt’s video