Maggie Grace

Maggie Grace has been lost. Maggie Grace has also been taken. And lately, Maggie Grace has been trying her best to survive the zombie apocalypse. With roles in Lost, Taken, and The Walking Dead, the actress has been part of some of the bigger productions out there.

Maggie Grace’s acting career has spanned nearly 20 years. While she may best be known as Shannon Rutherford on the J.J. Abrams TV series Lost, Grace has done plenty before and most certainly after her time on the island.

Before Grace got Lost, she got her start on a feature called Rachel’s Room. She was in a TV movie (Murder in Greenwich), another feature (Shop Club) and then made a run on a bunch of TV series that included Septuplets (which never got air time), CSI: Miami, The Lyon’s Den, Like Family, and Cold Case. Maggie Grace’s first steady-ish gig came on the series Oliver Beene, where she had an eight-episode recurring spot.

All of this helped Maggie Grace nab the role that would essentially launch her career.

MAGGIE GRACE HAD A MAJOR ROLE IN LOST

Her character on the TV show Lost, Shannon Rutherford, was described as a Paris Hilton clone. Producer and co-creator Damon Lindelof called Shannon a bitch. The part was perfectly written but more importantly, Maggie Grace pulled off the role with style and a whole lot of despicable attitude.

Maggie relished her role as the spoiled brat, a survivor among survivors of a horrific plane crash that finds them on a mysterious island. Her character is so self-indulgent that instead of helping the injured, the frantic, and the heartbroken, Shannon occupies her time by sunbathing while mayhem goes on around her. She is an immensely disliked character.

Lost was told in flashbacks at first. It was a device that allowed the storytellers to bring its audience up to speed with how specific characters got on to the plane, what made them tick, and what secrets they could have been hiding.

Maggie Grace’s character’s story involves her stepbrother Boone, who came into her life when she was 8 years old. Then, 10 years later, Shannon loses her father to a car accident and because he never had a will prepared, all his gains go to his wife, Shannon’s stepmother.

Shannon is left without a single dime. So, she comes up with a con to get some of the money by using Boone, since she knows he has always had a thing for her. The con goes south and on a drunken night, Shannon and Boone do the dirty deed. All this leads to the pair going to the airport to fly home on Flight 815. We all know how that ends up.

Maggie Grace’s time on Lost didn’t last long. She made it to the eighth episode of Season 2 before her character was accidentally shot and killed. While it didn’t come as a huge surprise to viewers (Boone had been killed earlier in the series), it was felt. Fans were just beginning to realize why Shannon was Shannon and she had begun to develop a relationship with Sayid (Naveen Andrews).

As with many things on Lost, Shannon’s death wouldn’t be the last time she would be seen on the show. Producers tried to get Maggie Grace back for the sixth and final season’s premiere but the actress was busy.

Instead, they were able to bring her back for the series’s polarizing finale in which Grace’s Shannon returns to join the “afterlife” with the rest of the “survivors.”

MAGGIE GRACE STARS IN TAKEN

It was the remake of John Carpenter’s The Fog that helped pull Maggie Grace from Lost. Not that the producers didn’t already have it planned, but producer Lindelof noted it was a “win-win.”

Executive producer Carlton Cuse concluded that after Boone’s death “the story avenues for Shannon felt limited.” It just so happened that Grace was ready to explore feature films on a full-time basis, so the timing of her character’s death couldn’t have been better.

Maggie Grace’s gamble on a feature film career didn’t pay off quickly. After Lost, it took the actress a couple of years before her next role. She found them in Suburban Girl and then in The Jane Austen Book Club.

But she really got things going when she starred in the Liam Neeson surprise hit Taken. In it, Maggie Grace played Neeson’s daughter who, as per the film’s title, gets Taken by some pretty nasty bad men.

Neeson then gets to use his “particular set of skills” to locate and save his daughter. The film spawned two sequels, both of which Grace starred in. In Taken 2, her character is given a much larger role.

SHE JOINED FEAR THE WALKING DEAD

After this work, Maggie Grace spent time on another hit series, this one putting put her smack dab in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. She played Althea Szewczyk-Przygocki (try to pronounce that name) on Fear the Walking Dead. The character was a journalist who joined the show during Season 4.

She was also lead in the six-part web series Fear the Walking Dead: The Althea Tapes.

As a series, Fear the Walking Dead is through seven series with an eighth and final season premiering in May 2023. Maggie Grace’s character was only recurring last time around, so it’s unclear how much she’ll be a part of this final run of episodes. But her role is especially important, given the fact that she has a CRM secret. It could be one thing that eventually ties in with the Rick Grimes storyline from The Walking Dead.

SHE MADE PANDEMIC HEADLINES ARGUING WITH EVANGELINE LILLY

Maggie Grace made big headlines after her former Lost co-star, Evangeline Lilly, also made some headlines, all for the wrong reasons. Lilly posted controversial views on the COVID-19 pandemic (she has since, of course, apologized) that drew a ton of backlash, including some from Grace.

In part, Lilly responded to comments on her initial “morning tea” post, “…Some people value their lives over freedom, some people value freedom over their lives. We all make our choices.”

Maggie Grace responded with a lengthy post to her former co-star, “There’s no need to panic, but at the same time this is about all of us – the vulnerable, the immunocompromised, older folks. Sure, it’s a free country, but how about choosing to exercise some of that wonderful freedom to have some compassion, trust the extensive science here and not overwhelm health system. No doctor should have to choose which patients get life saving care and which patients get sent home to die – the sort of triage that is tragically happening in Italy right now. Think about how these small decisions effect [sic] your dad and those in your community as ventilators run out.”

Then the actress added, “PS Daniel said he is doing a lot better btw. I don’t know, Maybe you guys want to chat.” The “Daniel” Maggie Grace referenced was another Lost co-star, Daniel Dae Kim, who had contracted the COVID virus and was slowly recovering.

MAGGIE GRACE BECAME A MOTHER IN 2020

Responding to Evangeline’s Instagram post was not all that Maggie Grace was dealing with during the pandemic. In October 2020, Maggie Grace and her husband Brent Bushnell welcomed their first child, a son.

She first announced her pregnancy earlier to US Weekly, then shared a picture of her son holding her finger. She has since posted a few adorable pictures of herself and her little boy.

Now Maggie Grace finds herself not only dealing with zombies but the adventures of being a new mom. There is a good chance Maggie Grace will be just fine as a mom, the jury is still out on where she’ll end up on Fear the Walking Dead.