We’ve been telling you about TNT‘s upcoming pandemic series The Last Ship for quite some time, and now the premiere is finally nearly here. Last week, star Rhona Mitra took some time to talk about the show, shining some light on her role and on two entities which play as big a part as any cast member.

First, check out one of the recently release prequel “video diaries” featuring Ms. Mitra as Dr. Rachel Scott. As an aside, these prequel videos are a great bit of additional info that really set the stage for the pilot:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/Fp4P6x-3XH4[/youtube]

As it turns out, while Mitra did a tremendous amount of research for the role, she already knew “a lot about paleomicrobiology and virology because I’m somewhat of a geek. And this world and the subject matter is already of great interest to me, so it came at the perfect time.” Which makes her interesting, endearing, and slightly creepy. We love her.

And as you saw in the video, this is a virus that goes beyond any dealt with in the modern world. It even has a personality of sorts, a character that develops, and unfortunately mutates, maybe even with some outside help. “We’ll see how other people have impacted the virus and … how that exactly has taken hold of the planet in the way it has. And that’s really to me I think one of the most intriguing parts of our show.”

[youtube]http://youtu.be/iwpViY8-WnU[/youtube]

The active nature of the virus plays such a big part that it’s like a character in the series, as is the setting. “I think the ship should have her own number on the [actors] call sheet and so should the virus. They’re two such strong personalities, you know?”

Just as the writers of outbreak series Helix did, the writers and Mitra worked very closely with virologists for this series, and that was in fact her favorite thing about working on the show.

My favorite part has been really talking with the scientists and the virologists and the paleomicrobiologists about the truth of the situation and digging in deep to connecting to the reality of story versus reality of what’s happening on our planet, and connecting to that as a human being, as a woman, and making sure that umbilical cord is connected and the through line is joined and that it doesn’t seem like some sci-fi, far off, extraordinary possibility. And so keeping that thread of truth has been my favorite part so far.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/CamkhmRmjyQ[/youtube]

Scary stuff, kids.

Thanks so much to Rhona Mitra (and her character Dr. Rachel Scott) for taking the time to talk with us about this excellent new series.

The Last Ship, starring Eric Dane, Rhona Mitra, Adam Baldwin, Travis Van Winkle, Charles Parnell, Christina Elmore, Sam Spruell, and Marissa Neitling, premieres June 22 at 9/8c on TNT.