During the 2016 WonderCon in Los Angeles, The Last Ship executive producer Steven Kane and actress Bridget Regan who plays Sasha Cooper teamed up to discuss season three. The new season’s set to premiere on TNT on Sunday, June 12th at 9pm ET/PT and as Kane explained during our interview, we can expect the crew of the Nathan James to be addressing an emerging issue with the cure in Japan. “Something’s going on in Japan, the cure doesn’t seem to be working, there’s a risk of a mutation,” explained Kane, adding, “But that doesn’t seem possible because Dr. Scott said it doesn’t mutate. That was one of the reasons we were able to stop it, but something’s going on.”
The trailer for season three shows some of the crew members being captured and held as prisoners of war. Commenting on what fans of the series can expect from the upcoming season, Kane said, “Let’s just say that there’s a lot going on. A lot of intrigue in Asia and intrigue at home, and our guys get caught smack-dab in the middle of it.”
“The region is filled with pirates – not the Pirates of the Caribbean pirates, but people just sort of stealing what they can. Natural resources may be in abundance but getting them out of the earth, getting them out of the farmland is still [difficult]. You need people for that. There are going to be winners and losers in this post-apocalyptic world and so our job is to make sure that the winners don’t subjugate the losers,” explained Kane. “We kind of put our nose into different places and say, ‘Look, we brought the cure home for everybody. If there’s a mutation, we want to get to the bottom of it and see if our doctors can figure it out. We worked too hard for this to fall apart now.'”
Asked how season three will top the previous two seasons, Kane replied, “We ask that question of ourselves because we throw everything in every time. We didn’t just take three years to find the cure – we found the cure the first season. So, what do you do next? And then it was, ‘Well, what does America look like?’ And then we started the season saying, ‘What can we do next?’ I was already talking about if we get a season four, what I could do. I started saying things like, ‘Well, season three was easy because…’ And I caught myself and said, ‘Wait a minute, two months ago I was saying how season two was so easy and season three is killing me. So our attitude is like what the Navy SEALS say, ‘The only easy day was yesterday.'”
“The trick is you can’t BS the audience. You can’t create something people won’t believe entirely because everything is kind of grounded in reality,” added Kane. “The virus is grounded in real science. The desires of people who wanted the cure was grounded in real human behavior, whether it was greed, whether it was panic or fear. You know, Mrs. Granderson had points. She made good points. She was still a villain but she had logic. She wasn’t twirling a mustache. And, the Russians had a point. And the Brits – the guys who became immune – they had a philosophy. They were even writing a manifesto. So, how do you create villains that are not just the Bad Guy of the Week, that actually are worth exploring as characters in and of themselves, and then give these guys great people to fight against. And then to force them to dig deep into what they can bring, fighting each other…not fighting but arguing with each other and fighting the common enemy. Then, keeping it exciting, keeping it at sea. They’re all the challenges we have.”
As for what Bridget Regan can tease about her character, Sasha, Regan offered, “Sasha, when we meet her, she’s in what we refer to as New China. One of the things I love about the show is that it explores this idea of what people are capable of in the best way and in the worst way. That’s what’s so scary about this premise and that’s what’s really scary about our setting for this season is that the people that can rise to power might not necessarily have the best of intentions. Sasha is doing her best trying to manage this new power in China and keep up relations as peaceful as possible, but there’s only so much she can do. So when Tom Chandler comes back into her life, she boards the Nathan James and she’s in a really new world for her. Being on board a Naval Destroyer is something fully new, but her skills are put to use because she is this translator. She’s aware of the region, of the potential adversariess and what their strengths are and their weaknesses. She’s vital to this mission and she has a knowledge that no one else on the ship has, but she also knows Tom in a way that no one else does.”
