Jacob Versus Lucifer

Actor Mark Pellegrino weighs up the pros and cons of playing his Lost and Supernatural characters

You wait years for the role of a lifetime and then, wouldn’t you know it, two come thundering along at once. But if you thought this would give Mark Pellegrino any insight into how two of the greatest TV mysteries of our generation, Lost (in which he plays the mysterious, godlike Jacob) and Supernatural (in which he plays Lucifer) are going to climax you’d be dead wrong. “I’m only told what I need to know, they’re more tight-lipped than the people that know what really happened to Kennedy.”

With plum parts in the home stretch of two of sci-fi TV’s biggest phenomena, 2010 is set to be a big year for Pellegrino. But given the choice in the morning, would the actor prefer to slip on Lucifer’s meat suit or Jacob’s air of mystery before work? “That’s interesting. At the moment it feels like Lucifer’s got a tremendous range of things going on and it really feels quite dangerous, whereas Jacob is more even keeled, but who knows where Jacob’s going? To be honest with you I don’t know where he’s going, but there’s so much potential for the ship to overturn with Lucifer and for all kinds of things to happen that I’m really finding that quite powerful.”

You can read more of this interview with Mark Pellegrino in SFX #195, on sale next Wednesday 7 April