Sawyer was originally a slick conman who wore a Prada suit. Midway through his audition for the role, Josh Holloway forgot his lines and kicked a chair in frustration. He managed to remember his lines after this and finished reading the monologue. The producers knew he didn't suit the role, but thought he was very watchable, so they rewrote the role to suit him, making him more feral, Southern, and kept the same intelligence he originally had. Matthew Fox, Jorge Garcia and Dominic Monaghan read Sawyer's lines when they came in to audition because there was no existing script for their characters. Damon Lindelof has stated that Sawyer was written as a character whom audiences were supposed to care about even if his behavior was not sympathetic – "He's an asshole, but he acts as an asshole because of the horrible things that happened to him as a kid". The character flashbacks would try to follow the same spirit of the character, "a humorously engaging rascal — but who did have this sort of darkness to him", while showing what made Sawyer "a man who's hell-bent on revenge, like an Ahab model."