Peter Krause is best known for his role as Bobby Nash, the heroic fire chief on “9-1-1,” but not many people remember his turn as a distraught detective contending with supernatural forces on Syfy’s “The Lost Room.” A miniseries consisting of three episodes, 2006’s “The Lost Room” stars Krause alongside Julianna Margulies, known to many as Carol Hathaway on “ER,” who appears here as a member of a secret organization. The series sees Krause’s Joe Miller trying to find his daughter after she vanished into the Room — a motel room that vanished from existence in the 1960s following a mysterious incident known only as the Event. Joe’s daughter, Anna, is played by another recognizable star — a young Elle Fanning.
The series puts Joe on a mission to find his daughter by tracking down the Objects, a series of items from the Room that were imbued with powers by the Event. In order to save his daughter, Krause’s Joe teams up with Margulies’ Jennifer Bloom. Legion, the group to which Jennifer belongs, is committed to locating all the Objects and finding a way to destroy them. While Legion is attempting to destroy the Objects for the good of humanity, other groups have emerged, attempting to use the Objects for their own selfish ends or in acts of cult-like dedication.
Despite the rich lore and compelling mysteries concocted by “The Lost Room,” as well as broadly positive reviews, the series’ relatively short run has left it largely forgotten.
Peter Krause on the draw of The Lost Room
Speaking to the press about “The Lost Room” around the time of the series’ release, Krause discussed what drew him to the series and the bigger themes being explored through the world of this now overlooked sci-fi series. “What initially attracted me to the project is it does work on many different levels,” Krause said (via IGN). “If you just want to watch the show and enjoy a very suspenseful page-turner type story, that’s available to you. But if you want to again look at the piece more deeply, that is certainly one element I think of what [writers Christopher Leone and Laura Harkcom] were trying to explore.”
Krause touched on some of the deeper ideas that audiences might be able to look for in the series, addressing the notion that the room may belong to a “hotel from hell.” The actor explained, “We worked really hard at keeping the nature of the room and the world rather ambiguous so that people can interact with the show with their own imagination.”
Talking about the character of Joe, Krause said, “I liked also the chance to play a character who is a classic hero.” Krause explained that prior to this, he had played a lot of “conflicted anti-heroes,” but Joe’s only true moral dilemma comes at the very end of “The Lost Room.”