English actress Rhona Mitra is best known for her roles in TV series like Party of Five, The Practice, Boston Legal, Nip/Tuck, and Strike Back. Now the 37 year-old’s latest role is as Dr. Rachel Scott in the TNT drama The Last Ship.
Based on a novel by William Brinkley, the series, executive produced by Michael Bay, focuses on the crew of a U.S. naval destroyer who are among the only survivors of a global viral pandemic that has decimated most of the world. Mitra talks about what it was like for the cast filming on a ship.
“Well, I think, initially, everybody had to get their bearings with the geography of the ship and understand how really big men like Eric Dane and Adam [Baldwin} were going to maneuver around the ship, because these corridors are so small,” she notes, “Then, also, all the cameras, just all the things that you would normally do and have the luxury to move around as you would, I think that everybody’s learned how to adjust what it is they do and then, fit with that. I think the going out to sea thing was essential because we got a feel of the energy of… and I call her ‘the mothership’ because she is the mother, with everyone else, it’s very masculine, the ship, and there’s all these big five-inch guns and missiles.”
“It seems like everywhere you look, there’s another missile, there’s a lot of testosterone on that ship, but she’s ultimately this very female force,” Rhona continues, “So when you go out in the ship and feel the hum of her on the ocean and what that power’s like and when they were firing, we went out and they were doing their pat practice, we got to feel the power of the missile and all of that, you realize you understand and you attune yourself with the function of it. And that allows us to come back here, and thank goodness, we shot that stuff first and you hopefully can believe in that some of that sensation.”
Rhona talks about how much her character Rachel is dedicated to her work and how she deals with people like Quincy, played by Sam Spruell.
“We open up, she spends most of her time in Egypt and she’s out there by herself,” Mitra says, “You become incredibly dogmatic and your relationship with your viruses becomes a marriage, it becomes an absolute passion where you become so fixated that really, the people you work with, all you’re really talking about and you surround yourself with this conversation about this amazing thing you become obsessed by. And I think that the last few months even prior to us being sent out, being myself and Sam Spruell, who is Quincy, sent out, there was such a quiet frenzy going back on the planet Earth.”
“The conversation was so much surrounding how and where do we go to uncover what could be possibly causing this and how do we possibly get to the place where we find a vaccine to deal with this,” she adds, “I don’t think there was really any time to concentrate on shades of other people’s personality and how they were anything, and she’s not. And she’s also, by her own exclosure as well, she is very connected to people and a good people person. From the beginning, she was raised by herself and she lost her mother when she was very young and she set about, as a result of losing her mother, making her quest in her life about making it up to the fact that she felt she could have done something, and so her whole quest in life is being married to this, even her relationships fall away at the wayside.”
We asked Mitra if she got to consult with scientific experts the same way her cast mates consulted with actual members of the U.S. Navy.
“Prior to this project coming about, I was linked up,” Rhona says, “I was on the phone in communication with a couple of virologists in my life, because sometimes, life just imitates art. And of course, you’re talking to virologists in your own life. I have been quite up to speed in following certain things to do with neurotoxins and autoimmune disease and therefore, the bread crumb trail that lead back to those that are currently prevalent in our society. So I was talking to a couple of neurologists actually about multiples and their effect and their impact that they’re having on certain communities after the amount of floods that we’re having globally, and the symptoms that are being muddied with things as common as sinusitis and therefore, doctors are prescribing patients with antibiotics when there’s something graver going on, and it’s actually autoimmune disease due to neurotoxins that are coming through the air through chemtrails, through BPA’s, through preservatives and vaccines, and a myriad of other things.”
“And so, I happened to be already connected to a couple of people in this project are up to my lab and of course, I’m going to play a neurologist now, that makes sense,” she continues, “And so, when I hit the ground running with this, I was like, ‘Yep, I know what I’m talking about here, I know what I’m talking about here,’ and so on. And I had this amazing, lovely woman who has been my support, my one little lady Paula. And she and I talk about stuff and make sure everything’s on point and all the little things, just even the mannerisms, a lot of it has to do with the dance and the ballet of how one moves within the bubble within the bubble, and just the grace of that and the fluidity of that and how one masters your language with that to make sure that I’m representing the world as fluently as possible. So I like to keep her that side as when I’m doing those scenes as much as possible. You have to really, because those boys have the Navy around them on set, all day, everyday, checking everything. And I’m like, ‘I better look like I know what I’m doing, too.”
Rhona was asked if Rachel gets to experience any lighter, pleasant moments over the course of the season.
“Except it gets much better,” she says, “It gets much fluffier, I promise you. It’s really serious what’s happening. There’s nothing, not one point. In episode one, she can’t tell anybody that she knows their families are possibly dying, their mothers, their children, their babies, all of that. She’s holding all of that secret. You imagine, it’s like this pressure cooker, until the moment when I’m allowed to tell him, because he’s like, I need after the Russians come and attack. And he’s like, ‘OK, the ruse is up. What the bejesus is going on, woman?’ So then, finally, she’s like, ‘OK, here it is,’ and it’s not the best news. I’ve been hiding the fact that, by the way, your wife and two kids and everyone else on this ship. Yeah, their family has been in jeopardy for four months and I’ve been keeping that secret from you boobs, not feeling too bubbly about that, not finding a bubbly moment in that, no, I couldn’t. And it was definitely a line, we had to discuss that, because ultimately, what happens after everything is out is that you have two very specific dogmatic groups of people, whether it’s the scientific world and the military and they have their different agendas.”
“In absolute respect to what it is Captain Chandler, being Eric, has to do, which is make sure he gets his boys and girls back home, that he completes mission, and now he understands that his mission and my mission are one in the same, we have to work out a way of me not being the albatross on the ship,” Mitra adds, “Me actually being possibly more of the saving grace, the only person, because there’s no one else on the ship, so it becomes then this harmonious balance, this relationship building between these groups of people. And then what you see is people as opposed to scientists and Navy boys and girls, you see people underneath her start coming out, and that’s where it starts to get, technique becomes more textured, where you start relating to these humans.”
With series constantly raising the bar in the last few years, on TV with shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad and on Netflix with Orange Is The New Black and the American version of House Of Cards, Mitra talks about how she feels about the opportunities television provides to actors today.
“I think television is giving more opportunities to everybody, definitely more than film, absolutely,” she says, “But I think television is richer for everybody these days. I think that everybody, whether it’s a female thing or look thing, this whole thing about even what character actors used to be. Everybody has a moment to shine on television, the writing is so much more subtle and complex, and the places you can go to for longer periods of time, the avenues you can go to. It’s always been that way, but more so now than ever. When I was given the opportunity to do this, I was working on another show and I begged to come in and work out the schedule so I can come do this, because of the balance of who she represents, in a world and the temperature of a subject matter that I’m very interested in. I don’t believe this is just some bombastic, phantasmagorical, ‘boom boom’ show. I really believe the undercurrent of what this represents is a real reality for us and I’m very, very interested in that.”
“And to be able to play the dynamic of not just women within this world, because what happens in this is it becomes less about men and women, it becomes less about testosterone and estrogen, it becomes about what people do when faced and confronted by something this magnanimous, and that’s what’s interesting to me,” Rhona continues, “And that’s why I think we’re at, as a race, as a people, is that all the stuff that went before about women needing to be this and men needing to be this and the balance which is completely off between men and women, needs to be annihilated. People need to just basically rise to the occasion and be brothers and sisters together without sounding too “Kumbaya” about the whole thing, and that’s what I’m interested in seeing. And yes, it’s lovely that it happens to be a female that’s at the helm of the cerebral part of this, the scientific aspect. But on the other side, we have this incredibly lovely family man played by Eric, who creates this amazing support and without him, it doesn’t work, and so, you do have this yin-yang balance, so it’s a lovely opportunity.”
Rhona was asked if Rachel having shouting matches with CO Chandler, played by Dane, in the hallway implies sexual tension.
“You can read into whatever you want to, whatever you wish,” Mitra says, “If that’s where you like it to go, I’m sure you can make that happen, I don’t know. Genuinely, those things are going on everywhere. You’ve only seen one episode. There’s other things happening that I’m not telling you about.”
It was pointed out to Mitra that the great irony of being a fairly isolated character on a show like The Last Ship is you’re in a situation where you are forced to connect to a group of people for survival.
“Yeah, you have to. It’s automatic,” Rhona says, “And I think that what I’ve come to realize is this, we all have, as men and women, become too tough in our individual lives. We just get on, we just become so bloody pragmatic with everything. We just get on and we’re tough and we roll with the punches and we don’t let our people see our lips quiver and we don’t ask for help when we need it. It’s not just people in certain jobs that are that way, I think that as women, we’ve become very hard and almost too. It’s not about being capable, because I think women have always very capable and physically as well as in all other areas, but I think that this thing about working together is really important, and I think it’s very innate and I think that it’s a natural thing when everybody feels that their job titles, their credentials, their cars, and their suits, and their labels all fall away.”
“They were all just left as children in the sandbox, saying, ‘Right, OK, how do we…whose hand can I hold?’” she adds, “And that’s what it really boils down to. If you really strip it away and it’s not even a question of, ‘How do I undress myself to make myself vulnerable.’ There’s a much bigger threat, which is ultimately the most. It puts you into the state of so much grace and humility automatically that the bravado falls away. And the fear is there, because the fear to do right, and that is the only aspect that ego that is involved in this particular trail is, for a while, holding onto that fear that you have and that story that you are telling yourself, which is like, if I don’t get this right, if I don’t make it up to my mother, that I’m going to be a failure, and that’s the story you keep telling yourself, but at the end of the day, you do your best. You just keep on doing your best, and that’s the tension of the show and that’s what’s so brilliant about it, everybody at every single second is doing their best. And so, any undercurrent of whatever the lovely stuff that you could be so whimsical about in other television shows like love interests and things like that, it could be eluded to. But honestly, everybody has this focus, which is trying to protect everybody.”
We pointed out that Rhona’s character deals with fighting back a god complex while literally saving all of humanity. Rhona talks about how being Rachel’s knowledge as a virologist keeps the character grounded.
“Well, because she is not a vaccine maker, she just studies viruses, so she’s out of her depth here, so there is no foothold for her to have any higher ground with this,” she says, “She needs all the help that she can get, with what she has, doing what she thinks is the right thing to do. But this isn’t entirely her wheelhouse, so there’s no real place to have any. I know what I’m doing, I’ve got this. There’s trial and error, they have to go and bring her monkeys, who are amazing, by the way, some of the best I’ve ever worked with, so professional, amazing. And one was like a real little princess diva, she knew exactly what to do on each take.”
“When it was emotional scenes, she’d do really dramatic things like put her hands to the glass and I was like, crying,” Mitra adds, “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, she’s the best thing ever.’ So it’s always trying to keep one foot in front of the other with this. There’s no time to beat your chest or get pompous about it, and that would be horrible if she was like that. I don’t think there’s any room to feel like you want to work with her then, and see anyone work with her or champion it because if you have any of that, virologists generally don’t come riddled with the ego that say surgeons can have and some demigods. I can say that because my dad’s a surgeon. Usually, what happens with virologists is they work together on teams, to be solo like this, and to not have a team to bash this stuff around with is an incredible impediment, so Rachel is constantly trying to, in her world, figure this out by herself with Quincy, but Quincy does what he does and that throws it for a loop. But you don’t even have time to think about that betrayal, because there’s something more important at hand, so I hope you don’t think that she becomes a bit of an arrogant know-it-all.”
Mitra was asked if she enjoyed playing physically demanding roles more than say playing a lawyer.
“This is my favorite kind of role to play,” Rhona says, “This is like the perfect blend of everything. If I was to have taken all of my favorite bits and parts that I’ve played before. It’s now sort of culminated in this one character, which is Rachel Scott, because she’s cerebral enough and I think the environment that she’s thrown in interests me in such a way that I feel that it’s not this…The legal world is a contrived environment we created in this society that really is so bananas to me, so to actually connect that with passion, the legal system, because as we all know, it just drives us all mad, wondering why it even exists. But this environment, for me being somebody who actually is not part of the Navy and coming in as sort of a rogue element, I say to the writers that what I love about this is everybody is very linear.”
“She comes in, she sort of muse and freeform and she has her own, you have to be as a virologist, you have to keep on thinking on your toes and you have to move in any which way you need to at the time, given what clue you’re given,” she continues, “And I like that she’s ad-hoc like that because it takes away the strictness of being either a lawyer or in the navy. Or in my past show, I was military and I had to have a ponytail in a certain place and you’re carrying your gun in the wrong way and it’s strict as well, so science keeps it Virgo, which is part of my little project.”
Rhona was asked if she would have played Rachel as an American.
“I asked that,” Mitra replies, “Because I quite wanted her to be American, but then, they approved me and she absolutely has to be English. I quite like the idea of her being American, but they wanted her to be British.”
Mitra was asked why she would want to play the character as an Americna.
“Because I heard her as American, I could hear it,” she says, “I could hear it and I could see it, I could feel it. And I think she’d be good as an American as well. I don’t always think that way, but they like the contrast of the cultures on the ship. They thought it just bought that nice diversity, I suppose.”
“And there’s quite a lot of English accents on TV now, they didn’t used to be so much,” Rhona adds, “It used to be more of a requirement that, ‘Can you do American because it’s easier for our audiences to relate to you.’ And now I feel like I’m seeing just a lot more different accents actually in the TV world.”
It was brought up how it’s always America that saves the world all the time, and it was refreshing to see someone foreign-born be part of that for a change.
“Saving the human race,” Mitra corrects in reply, “I’ve made a point of correcting that. When I’m shooting, there are lines that we are like, ‘We have to save the world.’ I’m like, ‘No, we’re not saving the world. When we’re all gone and we’re done screwing it up, it’s going to be just fine. We have to save the humans, and then, we need to do that, and that’s our task.’ And then the Russians come in.”
It was pointed out that the Russian saves the human race, too.
“No, he just wants the money and the vaccine, so he can sell it and make billions,” Rhona replies, “His objective is not the same. His isn’t the same, it’d be nice if it was. That ship is amazing as well. That was an incredible night actually. We shot a couple of nights on the Iowa in Long Beach.”
“And it’s one of those ones where we’ve been working inside the ship and they came out, they dressed the ship with all these Russian sailors, all these amazing Russian sailors and they’re all like smoking,” she adds, “And I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, what have I stepped out into? Who did this? Where did you all come from? It’s amazing.’ And it was like 3:00AM and the wind was blowing and I was like, ‘This is a TV show? What are we doing here?’ And they were all much more handsome. They had that European thing. I was like, ‘I think I want to stay on this ship. Can I change ships now?’”
Rhona was asked why end-of-the-world scenarios seem to be popular right now in TV series like The Walking Dead and films like World War Z.
“Well, yeah, because we are dancing on the precipice of that right now,” Mitra replies, “I think what we’re seeing is we’re in jeopardy through our own design, or however you want to argue it, but I do believe there’s a die-off taking place, which has been fairly evident over the last couple of decades and it’s been escalating. And I think that everybody in the film world, media, has in the last maybe 20 years ago, they went straight to, ‘Well, it’s going to be aliens or it’s going to be these things that are so bombastic and out of reach,’ but the temperature of what we’re talking about in this show and in some other shows is actually a reality.”
“Viruses and bacterias that we have no handle over whatsoever, mold even, silent killer,” she continues, “That is the zombie apocalypse. Talk about a zombie apocalypse, look at all the different states and countries in the world that have been hit by floods and see what’s happening as a result to people’s neurological systems, just through mold, and that’s been here for billions and billions of years, primordial. And so, I just think we’re in an interesting time where a lot of malaises are coming about and people are dying very slowly in a way that we haven’t seen before, and I think it’s just figuring out which is going to be the one that’s going to take out the most and the quickest and in the swiftest amount of time.”
Mitra was asked if all her knowledge on viruses from playing Rachel has made her a germpahobe.
“I’m not germaphobic,” Rhona says, “I was already highly diligent about not having anything that could create a neurotoxin effect in my life before this started, because I already had sensitivities because of an autoimmune disease, ironically through preservatives in a vaccine. So I was already very pedantic about my environment, not to the point where I don’t go anywhere, but to do with products and foods and eating stuff and environment. I live up in the trees and try to keep in a fresh environment as much as possible.”
Rhona was asked if anyone has ever come and asked her for advice on looking more healthy.
“It tends to be sometimes, every once in a while, people will come up to you and say, ‘OK, well, this is working for you,’” Mitra says, “They see changes, they see health benefits, and you don’t push anything on anybody. Everybody has to take their own route and I think that the most incredible thing about our times is that what’s out there for people to understand how they can cure themselves and heal themselves through, the majority is through natural medicine, it’s through integrative and homeopathic medicine to counter the toxic chemical world. Everything is there, inset through people online and that’s what I learned, the community through the Internet and how you can help yourself is extraordinary.”
“And what’s happening to Western medicine and science is the tip is tipping, the scale is tipping,” she adds, “It’s very interesting. And I feel lucky to know that simpler is better. I feel very privileged to know at this age and in this stage in my life that the simpler your life is and the cleaner your life is, the happier you are. And so, whatever health benefits and domino effect that has is up to the individual. Any you know, any we know, any barometer of how well we feel and how clear we feel, how potent we feel in our day to do our best, and the things that quash that. It’s really up to that individual to take control and be your own monster of how you play with your graphic equalizer and command band. Because everyday, we’re in survival mode, every single day, through pollutants, through chemtrails, through you name it, the myriad of things that come at us to combat us. So I found that simpler, cleaner is the route.”
Original post: Rhona Mitra Interview for The Last Ship